Religion or Godliness? December 15.

This is the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean, as it used, the service of God -- the being like God and showing forth God's glory. No, religion means nowadays the art of getting to heaven when we die, and saving our own miserable souls, and getting God's wages without doing God's work -- as if that was godliness, as if that was anything but selfishness, as if selfishness was any the better for being everlasting selfishness!

Village Sermons. 1849.