^ When the zeal of a Christian doth leave the internals of religion, and fly to ceremonials, externals, or inferior things, the soul must needs consume and languish : yea, though you were sure your opinions were true, yet when the chiefest of your zeal is turned thither, and the chiefest of your conference there laid out, the life of grace decays within, and your hearts are turned from this heavenly life. Not that I would persuade you to undervalue
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the least truth of God ; yet let every truth in our thoughts and speeches have its due proportion, and I am confident the hundredth part of our time and our conference would not be spent upon the now common themes. For as there are a hundred truths of far greater consequence, which do all challenge the precedency before these, so many of those truths alone are of a hundred times nearer concernment to our souls, and therefore should have an answerable proportion in our thoughts. Neither is it any excuse for our casting by those great fundamental truths, because they are common and known already. He is a rare and precious Christian who is skilled in the improving of well-known truths. I could wish you were all understanding men, able to defend every truth of God. But still I would have the chiefest to be chiefly studied, and none to shoulder out your thoughts of eternity. The least controverted points are usually most weighty, and of most necessary frequent use to our souls.^
3. Even in the full career of his denunciation of error, St. Paul preserves the balance of his judgment. Circumcision cannot avail you anything, he is insisting. But he pauses to add " nor un- ci rcumcision."
He speaks in criticism of another tendency, and he points the failure of another character. The ritualists trusted in the presence of a ceremony to save them ; but the anti-ritualists were beginning to trust in the absence of one. They had gained, to some extent, the vision of the Christian's liberty. They under- stood, to a degree, the preaching of our freedom in Jesus Christ. They had learned that the days of hard formality and of exacting usage were gone by. Especially among the Gentiles was there somewhat of a disposition to exult. They had heard it said that in Christ Jesus " circumcision " is unavailing. They were making, in consequence, a great deal of " uncircumcision." It was a mystery to St. Paul that men should extol their bonds, and glory in ceremonial requirements. But it was at least equally a mystery to him that men should put their trust in merely theoretic freedom, and boast themselves of a liberty which they never exercised for the purposes of a higher faith or worthier manhood. Circumcision cannot avail anything, he has said ; and then with clear reference to the temptation of those whose cause he was defending, he adds emphatically, " nor uncircumcision."
' Richard Baxter.
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0 we boast us of our law, Glory in our gospel light, Pity those who cannot draw Fresh the living water bright ; We are favoured, we are blest, We have heard the joyful sound, We are sons of God confessed, We are free who once were bound. Bless the Lord who unto us Is in mercy plenteous.
Ah ! but what if we are still Walking on in sinful ways, Keeping a rebellious will. Lusting for the world's poor praise ? What if we are growing old, None the wiser for the rod ? What if we have faith in gold, Not in either man, or God ? Shall we praise the Lord that we Have nor faith nor charity?
Not the hearer of the word. But the doer, he is just. He who, knowing not the Lord, Keepeth yet his soul from rust, He who doeth what is right, Bravely stands by what is true, Faithful to his inner light, Dark although it seem to you — He is nearer God than they Who know truth and disobey.^
4. True religion is not an outward thing. It does not consist in names or forms, in distinctions or privileges, in meats or drinks, in rites or ceremonies. These have their value. As long as we are here on earth, living in the flesh, we must have outward forms and symbolical rites. But such externals are not worth any- thing unless they make us grasp more firmly with our understand- ing, and feel more profoundly with our heart, the great truths of the gospel. It is a large attainment in Christian character to be able to say with St. Paul, Circumcision is nothing, and un- * Walter C. Smith, Thoughts and Fancies for Sunday Evenings, 97.
38g TRUE RELIGION
circumcision is nothing. Neither the one side nor the other touches the essentials.
^ The difference between art and nature shadows forth the difference between obedience in the Mosaic dispensation and the obedience of Christ. It is the difference between the artificial flower and the garden rose, between the sculptured figure and the breathing body; the one shaped from outside, the other deter- mined from within. It is the difference between the mechanical and the vital ; the one unsympathetic and constrained, the other organic, instinctive, voluntary, delightful. The law is henceforth put within our mind, written in our heart.^