Morning, August 8
Go To Evening Reading
“They weave the spider’s web.”
Isaiah 59:5
See the spider’s web, and behold in it a most suggestive picture of the hypocrite’s religion. It is meant to catch his prey : the spider fattens himself on flies, and the Pharisee has his reward.
Foolish persons are easily entrapped by the loud professions of pretenders,
and even the more judicious cannot always escape. Philip baptized
Simon Magus, whose guileful declaration of faith was so soon exploded
by the stern rebuke of Peter. Custom, reputation, praise, advancement,
and other flies, are the small game which hypocrites take in their
nets. A spider’s web is a marvel of skill : look at it and admire the cunning hunter’s wiles. Is not a deceiver’s religion equally wonderful? How does he make so barefaced a lie
appear to be a truth? How can he make his tinsel answer so well the
purpose of gold? A spider’s web comes all from the creature’s own bowels . The bee gathers her wax from flowers, the spider sucks no flowers,
and yet she spins out her material to any length. Even so hypocrites
find their trust and hope within themselves; their anchor was forged
on their own anvil, and their cable twisted by their own hands. They
lay their own foundation, and hew out the pillars of their own house,
disdaining to be debtors to the sovereign grace of God. But a spider’s web is very frail . It is curiously wrought, but not enduringly manufactured. It is
no match for the servant’s broom, or the traveller’s staff. The hypocrite needs no battery of Armstrongs to blow his
hope to pieces, a mere puff of wind will do it. Hypocritical cobwebs
will soon come down when the besom of destruction begins its purifying
work. Which reminds us of one more thought, viz., that such cobwebs
are not to be endured in the Lord’s house : he will see to it that they and those who spin them shall be destroyed
forever. O my soul, be thou resting on something better than a spider’s web. Be the Lord Jesus thine eternal hiding-place.