September 16

And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear my words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.—Ezekiel 33:31.

THOUGH there may be an external resemblance in the pretender to religion to those who are really and in heart devoted to God, yet there is an essential difference between them. Their professions and their actions disagree. Their mouth speaks of love, but their heart cleaves to the earth. Let us consider the difference between those who occasionally seem to be pious and those who are really so.

They differ in the principle whence they proceed:—the one proceeds from a spirit of fear and bondage; the other, from a spirit of love and delight. An unregenerate man considers the state of sin as a kingdom, and so he loves the services of it; and yet he considers it as a kingdom subject to the scrutinies and inquiries of a higher kingdom; and so he fears it, because the guilt thereof, and day of accounts, affright him. So that this natural conflict rises out of the compulsion of his judgment, not out of the inclination of his will; not from a desire to be holy, but only to be safe and quiet. He abhors the thoughts of God and his justice: whereas the faithful hate sin, with relation to the purity and righteousness of God,—desire to walk in all well-pleasing towards him,—hunger after his grace,—are affected with indignation, self-displacency, and revenge against themselves for sin,—mourn under their corruptions,—bewail the forwardness of their slippery and revolting hearts,—set a watch and spiritual judicature over them,—cry out for strength to resist their lusts,—and praise God for any grace, power, discipline, severity, which he shows against them. In one word, a natural conscience doth only show the danger of sin, and so makes a man fear it; but a spiritual conscience shows the pollution of sin, the extreme contrariety which it bears to the love of our heart, the rule of our life, the law of God; and so makes a man hate it, as a thing contrary, not only to his happiness, but to his nature, of which he hath newly been made partaker.

The principle of fear and bondage may make a man forbear and return, yet not unto the Lord: "They have not cried unto me." saith the Lord, "with their heart, when they howled upon their beds." Their prayers were not cries, but howlings, brutish, and mere sensual complaints, because they proceeded not from their hearts, from any inward and sincere affection, but only from fear of that hand which was able to cast them upon their beds. As a sick man eats meat, not for love of it, which he takes with much reluctance and disrelish, but for fear of death, which makes him force himself against his will;—whereas a healthy man eats the same meat with hunger and delight; so a natural conscience constrains a man to do some things which his heart never goes along with, only to avoid the pain which the contrary guilt infers.

In a tempest, the mariners will cast out all their wares, not out of any hatred to the things, for they throw over their very hearts into the sea with them; but because the safety of their lives, and preservation of their goods will not stand together; not under the apprehension of any evil in the things, but only as a lesser good which will not consist with the greater: and therefore they never throw them over but in a tempest; whereas, at all other times, they labor at the pump to relieve the ship of the water, which settles at the bottom, not only for the danger, but stench and noisomeness of it too. Thus a natural conscience throws away sin as wares; and therefore never forbears it, but in a tempest of wrath and sense of the curse, and quickly returns to it again: but a spiritual conscience throws out sin as corrupt and offensive water; and therefore is uniformly disaffected to it, and always labors to be delivered from it. The one fears sin, because it hath fire in it to burn; the other hates sin, because it hath filth in it to pollute the soul.

By this test let us try ourselves. When we accompany God's people in their sacred services with our bodies, do we carry our hearts with us? When we hear, do we take delight in doing the will of God? When our mouth speaks of love, does that sacred flame burn upon the altar of our hearts? When we fly from sin, is it because of its contrariety to God, or because we dread its punishment? Let conscience speak.