Some men say that they will test the holiness of Christ’s religion by
the holiness of Christ’s people. You have no right, I reply, to put the
question to any such test as that. The proper test that you ought to use
is to try it yourselves–to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” By
tasting and seeing you will prove His goodness, and by the same process
you must prove the holiness of His Gospel. Your business is to seek
Christ crucified for yourselves, not to take the representation of
another man concerning the power of grace to subdue corruption and to
sanctify the heart. Inasmuch as God has given you a Bible, He intended
you to read it, and not to be content with reading men . You are not to
be content with feelings that rise through the conversation of others;
your only power to know true religion is, by having His Holy Spirit
operating upon your own heart, that you may yourself experience what is
the power of religion. You have no right to judge religion from anything
extra or external from itself. And if you despise it before you have
tried it yourself, you must stand confessed in this world as a fool, and
in the next world as a criminal. And yet this is so with most men. If
you hear a man rail at the Bible, you may usually conclude that he never
reads it. And you may be quite certain if you hear a man speak against
religion, that he never knew what religion was. True religion, when once
it takes possession of the heart, never allows a man to quarrel with it.
That man will call Christ his best friend who knows Christ at all. We
have found many who have despised the enjoyments of this world, but we
never found one who turned from religion with disgust or with satiety,
after having once enjoyed it. No! no! you chose your own delusions, and
you chose them at your own risk; you foster them at your own peril. For
if you take your religion from other people, and are led by the example
of professors to discard religion, you are nevertheless guilty of your
own blood. God has not left you to the uncertain chart of men’s
characters: He has given you His own Word; the more sure word of
testimony, whereunto you do well that ye take heed.