The Axe at the Root–A Testimony Against Puseyite Idolatry
A Sermon
(No. 695)
Delivered on Sunday Morning, June 17th, 1866, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such
to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth."–John 4:23-24.
THE WOMAN'S CONSCIENCE had been aroused by Christ's declaration of her
sin. He was touching upon matters of the most vital importance, and her
depraved heart naturally shrunk from the lancet, From the truth which
was becoming inconveniently personal she flew to that natural resort of
the carnal mind, namely, to religions discourse upon points of outward
observance. Instead of confessing her sin, and asking how it may be
forgiven, she must needs say, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain;
and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
The carnal heart dreads the contact of spiritual truth, and finds a
most convenient way of avoiding it by running to questions of holy
places, holy times, and holy customs. Jesus, to her astonishment,
informs her that the question which she had asked was of only temporary
importance. There had been a time when it was well to know that
salvation was of the Jews, and that the rival temple of the Samaritans
was an imposture; but he says in effect to her, "Woman, believe me that
question is of no importance now, for the hour cometh, yea and now is,
when the external is to be abolished and the ritualistic is to be put
away, and a purer, simpler, and more spiritual worship, is to take its
place."
The worship which our Lord Jesus Christ established involved a change.
That is implied in the expressions here used. He announced to her that
the hour was just then come when all questions about this or that place
must cease, and be superseded by spiritual worship. Our Lord gave a
very brief, but I think a very instructive description of what this
worship was to be. If you observe carefully the words, you will see
that it was a distinguishing kind of worship, for he mentions true
worshippers. There had been but little distinction before; so long as
they all passed through the same outward form they all seemed to be
worshippers; but a distinction was now to be made clear and manifest.
Merely outward worshippers were now false worshippers, and only those
who pressed into spiritual worship were to be regarded as true. The
gospel of Christ is a great discerner and an accurate judge. Christ has
the winnowing fan in his hand; he sits as a refiner; he is compared by
the prophet to the "refiner's fire" and to "fuller's soap;" and hence
you see he discerns at once between worshippers and worshippers. There
they stand both alike with bended heads, perhaps both repeating the
same words, but the Savior distinguishes: "there is," saith he, "a
false worshipper, and there is a true worshipper, and he alone who is
spiritual is true." He announces further that under the gospel God is
to be worshipped in the character of a Father; true worshippers shall
worship the Father. This had not been the case before. The Lord had
been adored as the Adonai, and reverenced as Jehovah; but to say "Our
Father which art in heaven" remains the prerogative of the enlightened
Christian who, having believed in Christ, has received power to become
a son of God. True Christian worship addresses God, not merely as
Creator and Preserver, or as the great Lord of the Universe, but as one
who is very near of kin to us, our Father, beloved of our souls. Jesus
likewise states that gospel worship is to be of a kind which does not
result from the man himself merely, but comes from God, and is a work
of grace. This is implied in the sentence, "The Father seeketh such to
worship him," as if no true worship would come from any man unless God
sought it. True devotion under the Christian dispensation is not merely
human but also divine. It is the work of the Spirit in the soul
returning to its author; or as our hymn puts it–
"Prayer is the breath of God in man,
Returning whence it came."
These are very grave points, and draw a broad line of distinction
between the living worship of the chosen of God and the dead formal
worship of the world which lieth in the wicked one.
Furthermore, the Savior goes on to say that they who worship God are to
worship him "in spirit." No longer with the visible sacrifice of a
lamb, but inwardly trusting in him who is the Lamb of God's passover;
no more with sprinkled blood of goats, but heartily relying upon the
blood once shed for many; no longer worshipping God with ephod,
breastplate, and mitre, but with prostrate soul, with uplifted faith,
and with the faculties not of the body but of the inward spirit. We who
worship God under the Christian dispensation are no longer to fancy
that bodily exercise in worship profiteth anything, that genuflexions
and contortions are of any value, but that acceptable worship is wholly
mental, inward, and spiritual.
But he adds, lest there should seem an omission in the description,
"must worship him in spirit and in truth;" for though we should profess
to worship God only with the spirit and so despise forms, yet unless
the soul shall truly love, and really adore, and sincerely bow, our
worship will be as unacceptable as though it were formal and outward.
See then, brethren, putting the whole three together, the worship under
the Christian dispensation which God ordains, and which he accepts
through Christ Jesus, is a worship distinguished by an inward vitality
from the outward worship of the carnal mind. It is the worship of a
child towards a father, feeling within himself a kinship with the
divine; it is a worship wrought in us by God the Holy Ghost, because
the Father has sought us out and taught us how to worship him. It is a
worship which is not outward, but of the inner man, and occupies not
hand, eye, and foot, but heart and soul and spirit: and it is a worship
which is not professional and formal, but real, hearty, earnest, and so
acceptable before God.
Let me give a sketch of this worship as it actually exhibits itself. A
man may have been to a place of worship from his youth up, and he may
have fallen into a habit of repeating a sacred form every morning and
every evening, he may even have been a tolerably diligent reader of the
Word of God, and yet though this may have been continued for sixty
years and more, he may never once have worshipped God after the fashion
prescribed in the text. But see him! the Father seeks him, truth comes
home to his soul, and in the light of that truth he feels himself a
sinner, and feeling himself so, he cries, "Father, I have sinned." That
is his first true worship. See, brethren, his spirit feels it, he means
what he says. All that he said before was as nothing, but that first
cry "I have sinned" has in it the vitality of worship. He hears the
story of the cross, the full atonement made by God's appointed
sacrifice, and he prays, "Lord, I believe in Jesus, and I trust him;"
here is another specimen of true worship; here is the spirit resting
upon God's appointed sacrifice, and reverencing God's way of salvation
by accepting it. Being saved by the precious blood of Jesus, he cries,
"Father, I bless thee that I am saved, I thank thee that my sins are
washed away." This is true worship. Whether a man sings in the
assembly, or sings alone; whether he prays aloud, or prays in silence,
if he feels gratitude to God for pardon received, he offers the true
worship. The whole of the Christian's life, consisting as it must do of
dealings with the invisible God through Jesus Christ by his heart, is a
life of worship, and when at last he comes to die, you perceive that
his worship will not cease with death, because it has always been
spiritual, and did not depend upon the body. So that while the outward
man faileth him, the inward spiritual man grows more strong in devotion
than ever it was before; and when at last the spirit leaves its earthly
tenement, and is disembodied, it has still a song for God, and
throughout eternity its spiritual worship can continue; which worship
must have been suspended if it had been connected with the body, and
not with the immortal part of man.
If I understand the Savior's words, and I hope I do, not only
theoretically but practically, he means that those of us who are his
true worshippers must worship him with our better and our nobler part,
and our soul, with all the power she has, must pay reverence to the
unseen God, Brethren, this is the kind of worship that men will not
render to God; they will render him anything else but this; and until
divinely effectual grace shall work such worship in man's heart it is
obnoxious to him; he will worship God with robes, and incense, and
flowers, and banners, but he will not consent to worship him in spirit
and in truth.
I. I shall proceed to my work by giving A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY
OF WORSHIP, in connection with the doctrine that we are now to worship
more manifestly than ever God in spirit and in truth. It appears from
Scripture that worship before the flood was of the very simplest form.
The outward ordinances were very few; the chief of them being the
offering of sacrifice. This was probably instituted by God himself when
he clothed Adam and his wife with skins of beasts; it has been thought
that he then indicated to them the slaughter of beasts for sacrifice.
Certain it is that the first worship of fallen man was by sacrifice.
There was connected with this no doubt the meeting of gracious hearts
for prayer, and also the ministration of truth, for Enoch also, the
seventh from Adam, prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord; so
that they appear to have had what was tantamount to a ministry, and the
sons of God had appointed times for meeting. But this simple form of
worship seems to have been too high, too spiritual for fallen man at
the first; at any rate the seed of the serpent could not endure it, for
Cain at the very first commenced a schism; instead of bringing a
sacrifice by blood he must needs bring a sacrifice of the fruits of the
ground. Perhaps he was a man of taste, and desired to bring something
that should look more decorous than a poor bleeding victim; he would
lay those rich grapes, those ruddy fruits upon the altar; and those
fair flowers that gemmed the bosom of earth, surely he might consecrate
those. At any rate he was the first man who set up taste and self as
the guide in religious worship, and God had no respect unto his
sacrifice. The two stood by their altars; Abel by faith, exercising
spiritual worship, offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain;
Cain's offering was possibly even more fair to look upon but it was of
his own invention; Abel was accepted, but Cain discarded. The ultimate
result of man's sinfulness in connection with this early type of
worship was general neglect of all religion. The sons of God seem to
have maintained their simplicity for a time, but at last by unholy
alliances with the ungodly race there arose a widespread neglect of all
thought of God, so that they were married and given in marriage, they
ate and they drank till the day when the flood came and swept them all
away. Depraved nature thus refused to render spiritual worship. After
the flood we find worship restored in very much the same form: let us
distinguish it as the patriarchal method of worship. The head of a
family was accustomed to offer sacrifice, and no doubt if Job be taken
as a type thereof family prayer and household religion were maintained,
But you see very early the indication that man, although he could not
forget God, for the deluge had struck to the very heart of manhood an
awful dread of the Most High, began to interpose symbols and visible
objects between God and himself. The use of teraphim became very
common; so that in the house even of Abraham's ancestors teraphs were
found; and when we come down to the time of Jacob, we find one of his
wives stealing her father's images, thus proving that Laban, one of a
once God-fearing family, had become a worshipper of God through the
medium of images. Thus was it among those who still had some knowledge
of God; but the nations being dispersed, soon lost the pure idea of the
invisible One, and worshipped gods of their own devising. From the
plagues of Egypt, which were no doubt intended to be a blow against all
Egypt's gods, we find out that, in addition to the worship of the calf
or bull, the Egyptians paid religious reverence to flies, the river
Nile, the elements, beetles, and all kinds of creatures; and throughout
the world, as a general rule, through the introduction of visible
symbols of the unseen Being, the Lord himself had become forgotten, and
spiritual worship had almost ceased, except in one elect household; and
even there, alas! how fallen had spirituality become!
Keeping to the line of grace, we shall now introduce you to the
ceremonial form of worship which God instituted after the more
spiritual method had entirely broken down. He saw that the children of
Israel whom he loved were but a mob of slaves; their spirits had been
broken by bitter bondage; like the poor African race of the present
day, they seemed as a whole incapable of rising at once to mental
dignity, and needed to pass through a generation or two before they
could as a nation achieve manly self-government. So when he brought his
people out of Egypt the Lord did not try them with an altogether
spiritual form of worship; because of the hardness of their hearts
among other reasons, though he was still to be worshipped as a spirit,
yet he gave them certain outward signs by which they might be enabled
to understand his character. A great deal has been made of the
symbolical worship of the Jew, as if it were an excuse for the manmade
symbolism of the Roman and Anglican Antichrist. We would remark that
nothing ought to be made of it at all now, since it has been positively
declared many times in Scripture that the age of the shadow has gone,
and that the age of the substance now reigns. Whatever may or may not
have been the excellence of the old Jewish economy–and being divinely
ordained, God forbid we should say a word against it–yet the apostle
Paul always talks of it as being but a yoke of bondage to which we are
no more to submit ourselves, being but the shadow and not the very
image of the good things which were to come; and he speaks of it as a
thing so passed away, that to go back to it is to go back to the
rudiments, and not to go onward in the full-grown manliness of
Christianity. If there were no other passage my text might show that
the ceremonialism of the Jew is no excuse whatever for ceremonialism
now, but that we ought to stand in direct contrast to that, hearing the
Savior declare, that whatever may have been before his time, the hour
had come when the true worshipper must worship the Father in spirit and
in truth.
Remember that symbolical worship was suitable merely to the infancy of
God's church, and that now having received the Spirit of God to dwell
in us it would be as unsuitable as would the swaddling bands of
babyhood to full-grown men. Besides, even while it existed it was
spoken of as soon to be superseded by a new and better covenant. It was
frequently broken through by divine authority. Elijah though not at all
of the house of Levi offered sacrifice, and prophet after prophet as he
arose manifested and declared by his actions that God did not intend to
give the Levitical form of worship undivided sway, but that when he
poured his Spirit upon special men they were to break through all
ritual regulations in order to show that they were not meant to be
fixed and permanent.
It is not sufficiently remembered that the most of God's people in the
Jewish nation had very little to do with this symbolical worship. When
they were all in the wilderness, and gathered round the one tent called
the tabernacle, they might all see the fiery cloudy pillar; but when
they came into the land which God had given them, what had they most of
them to see? Why the temple itself the most of them would only see once
or twice in a year. Scarcely any one ever saw the ark, the cherubim, or
the golden candlestick; they were always within the veil, and only once
in the year did the high priest enter that sacred place. Even the place
where the sacrifices were carried on continually, no one entered but
the priests; so that to at least eleven tribes out of twelve the
ceremonials were mainly invisible. Little was done outside the court of
the priests, but the most of the sacrifices, and of the typology of
Judaism, was as much a hidden thing as the spiritual things of God are
to us at the present day; and thus there was a great exercise of the
spiritual faculties, and comparatively little of outward display.
Moreover, it is to be remembered that there was nothing whatever
visible for the Jew to worship. It is not so in the symbology of that
false Church which is trying to raise up and revive the beggarly
elements; there men bow before a cross; a piece of bread inside a box
is reverenced and treated with worship; cast-off clouts and rotten
rags, called relics, are the objects of adoration; but there was
nothing like this with the Jews, they did worship toward the temple,
but they did not adore the temple, or mercy-seat, the altar, or any
other emblem. Is it not said expressly, "Ye saw no similitude"? When
God descended upon Sinai, and all the people worshipped there, they saw
nothing which they dared to worship; God was to them still invisible,
and they had to exercise their mental faculties in the worship of the
invisible God. When at one time it was thought that the miraculous
powers of the brazen serpent entitled it to worship, Hezekiah called it
Nehushtan, that is, a piece of brass, and broke it to pieces. So that
with all its splendor of imagery, embroidered vest, and glittering
breastplate, to a great extent there was a powerful element of
spirituality even about Aaronic worship; I mean, of course, only to
spiritual men. David himself utterly outstripped the outward, when he
declared, "Sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire;" and when he
said again, "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it thee."
The prophet declares that God is weary of their sacrifices, and in
another place the Lord himself says that if we could come before him
with rivers of oil, or ten thousand of the fat of fed beasts, he would
not accept us with these. To obey is better than sacrifice, is told us
even under the law. So that even there, though not so distinctly as
now, the spirituality of worship was taught and declared.
But, dear friends, what became of this accommodation of worship to the
childhood of the church? You know that very soon after Israel came out
of Egypt they said, "Let us make gods that they may go before us." They
could not do without a visible God. Do not think that when they set up
the calf they meant to worship the calf instead of Jehovah, that would
be a slander upon them; they worshipped Jehovah through the calf–that
was their plea, for they said, "Tomorrow is a feast unto Jehovah." They
thought to represent Jehovah by a bull, "they changed their glory into
the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." Though severely rebuked, it
was the constant sin of Israel to desire to worship God under the
favourite Egyptian emblem of the bull. At last they had so far gone
into idolatry that they were driven far away; and in captivity they
were so chastened, and moreover brought into such contact with the
abominations of idolatry that they were heartily sick of it, and no Jew
has been an idolater ever since. Still, spiritual worship they would
not offer, and therefore fell into rigid ritualism, reverencing the
mere letter of the law, and fighting over trifling refinements of
regulation and observance; so that in Christ's day they made broad
their phylacteries and the borders of their garments, but they forgot
the Great Spirit who is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.
Since that day the Lord has been treated by carnal men in one of three
ways; either God is adored by outward symbols as among Brahminists,
Romanists, Puseyites, and other idolaters; or else he is worshipped
through ritualism, as among too many who claim to be orthodox, who
contend for pre-arranged, and unbending forms; written or unwritten as
the case may be: or else men show an utter indifference to God
altogether, and then rush into superstitious reverence for something or
other which is evil, and therefore to be dreaded and spoken of with
awe. This is the history of religious worship, that let spiritual
worship assume what form it may, man always will if he can, get away
from it and forget his God and set up something seen, instead of bowing
down before the unseen; hence the necessity of the second commandment
in the Decalogue, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or
any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not
bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a
jealous God, and so on." This is not a command against worshipping
another God, that is the first commandment, but a command against
worshipping God under any shape, or through any medium or under any
symbol; for he is a spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in
truth and not by symbols. Against this command the human mind is always
dashing itself, and in one shape or another idolatry is the ruling
religion of mankind.
Christ comes to tell us that now his worship is to be wholly spiritual,
even the altar which belongs to antediluvian times is gone, for we have
an altar of another kind; even the sacrifice which belonged to the
early period has departed like a shadow, because we have the sacrifice
of Christ in which to trust. As for the institutions which suited the
infancy of the church, they also have disappeared, for now Jesus would
have the worship of men enlightened by the indwelling of the Holy
Ghost; he would have us understand that a perfect revelation demands of
us, that in the perfection of our spiritual powers we should adore the
invisible God without the interference of visible signs. Now he would
have us cast away all outward types and signs, except the two which he
has himself ordained, and even these are types of the Savior's manhood
and not of his Godhead at all, to be only valued because of the
spiritual communion which they enable our hearts to hold with Jesus;
baptism being intended for spiritual men, that they may enter into the
Savior's death and burial, and the Lord's supper that the same persons
may remember his body broken and his blood shed for them; the water,
the bread, the wine, being mere emblems, not to be treated with
reverence, but put to their proper emblematic use.
II. I shall now, in the second place, try to ACCOUNT FOR THE EXTREME
RARITY OF SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. The reason is, my brethren, because man
has fallen. If man were what he once was, pure and holy, I cannot
conceive of his wanting holy places and crosses, copes, and dalmatics,
crosiers, and chasubles. I cannot conceive of the temptation to bow
down before a bull, or a Virgin Mary, or a wafer. There the noble
creature walks in paradise, and if he reclines beneath a shady tree, he
lifts up his eyes and says, "My Father, thou hast made this grateful
shade, here I will adore thee;" or if he walks in the full heat of the
sun, he says, "My God, it is thy light that shineth on me,–I adore
thee." Up yonder on the mountain's brow, or down by the gleaming river,
or the silvery lake, he needs build no altar, his altar is within
himself; be needs make no temple, his temple is everywhere. The morning
is holy, and the evening is holy; he hath no prescribed hour of prayer,
it is devotion all day long; his morning bath is his baptism; each meal
is his Eucharist. Depend upon it, the nearer we get back to the
nakedness of worship, the nearer we get to its truth and purity; and it
is because man has fallen, that as his body wants clothing, so he is
always dressing up his religion.
Moreover, it is far more difficult to worship God in spirit than in
form. To patter through a dozen Ave Marias or Paternosters is so easy,
that I can nearly go to sleep over them: to repeat a form of prayer in
the morning and evening is a very small matter, and one can be thinking
of the shop all the while; to go to church or chapel so many times a
week is a cheap duty, and withal one may still be a thief or a
hypocrite; but it is hard, very hard, to bring the heart down to humble
penitence, and the soul to holy meditation. The last thing that most
people will do is to think. The noblest part of our nature is still the
least exercised. Humbly to tremble before God, to confess sin before
him, to believe him, to love him–this is spiritual worship! Because
this is so hard, men say, " No, no, let me crawl on my knees around a
shrine! Let me kneel down before a pyx, let me help to make a cope, or
to manufacture some pretty piece of millinery for the priest to wear.
Let me go every morning to the steeple house and come out in half an
hour, and feel I have done my religion." That is quite easy, but the
hard part of religion is the part of spiritual worship.
And yet again, to worship God spiritually men would have to part with
their sins. There is no effect produced upon a man's conscience by his
being sprinkled, or by his taking the sacraments, he can do all that
and be as much a pleasure-lover, or a worshipper of Mammon, as he was
before; but, to worship God spiritually, a man must give up his sins,
must overcome his pride and lust, and his evil concupiscence must be
cast out of him. Many persons might honestly declare, "I do not mind
worshipping God if it consists in doing penance, or going without meat
on Fridays; but if I am to give up my sins, love God, seek Christ,
trust to him, I cannot attend to that." Furthermore, man, for the most
part, somehow cannot get the idea of this spiritual worship into his
brain, Oh the many times I have tried to preach spiritual worship here,
and yet I am conscious that when I try at it I do not interest many of
you, and some of you think, "if he would only give us more metaphors,
more anecdotes, and so on;" I say I will do that, for I believe we
should speak by parable, but sometimes I do not know how to clothe
these spiritual things without making you look at the clothing rather
than the spirit. It is not your worshipping God by words in hymns and
prayers, or sitting in a certain place, or covering your faces at
certain times that is acceptable to him; true worship lies in your
heart paying reverence to him, your soul obeying him, and your inner
nature coming into conformity to his own nature, by the work of his
Spirit in your soul; and because men can scarcely get the idea of this
till the Holy Spirit gives it to them, this is a reason why it is so
rare, so exceedingly rare. There is one other reason, dear friends, why
spiritual worship is unusual, and that is because man cannot traffic in
spiritual religion. The priest is up at arms directly. " Oh," saith he,
"spiritual! spiritual! why they will do without me one of these days.
Spiritual–why, if you tell these people that every place is holy, and
that there are no holy places; and that one believer is as much a
priest as another, and that prayer is as acceptable at home, as it is
in a particular spot, why," says he, "there is an end of me." Yes, sir,
there is an end of you, and the sooner the better for the world; for of
all the curses that have ever fallen upon the human race the priesthood
is the worst. Its claims are imposture, and its actions are full of
deceit, In the age of witches and ghosts priesthood might be tolerated,
but he who now sets himself up as a priest is as much a common nuisance
as a fortune-teller. Nothing has been such a nightmare upon the
intellect of man; nothing has sat like old Sindbad the Sailor upon the
back of humanity, like the pretensions of priesthood. God forbid that
Christianity should even for a moment endorse the lie! Christ has put
it all down. Christ says, "All ye are brethren," and he says of the
whole body of his elect, "Ye are a royal priesthood." Concerning all
the saints, Scripture declares, "Ye are God's clergy," for that is the
Greek word in the passage–"Ye are God's heritage." We know no clergy
and no laity; we know nothing whatever now of priesthood and of the
common people, for ye are made priests and kings unto God to offer
spiritual sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
III. Turning from that point, a third subject is this, WHY IS SUCH
WORSHIP TO BE RENDERED? Why did not God ordain worship by windmills as
in Thibet? Why has he not chosen to be worshipped by particular men in
purple and fine linen, acting gracefully as in Roman and Anglican
churches? Why not? He gives two reasons which ought to suffice. The
first is, he himself seeks spiritual worship. It is his own wish that
the worship should be spiritual, And in the second place, he is himself
a spirit, and is to be spiritually worshipped. Whatever kind of worship
the great Ruler desires he ought to receive, and it is impertinence on
my part if I say to him, "No, not that, but this." It is true I may
say, "I am very sincere in all this, very earnest in it. It suits my
taste. There is a beauty about it; it excites certain emotions which I
think to be devotional." What is all that but saying, "Great God, thou
hast chosen such-and-such a way of being worshipped, but I will not
render it to thee?" Is not that in effect saying, "I will not worship
thee at all;" for must not worship, to be worship, be such as the
person worshipped himself will accept? To invent our own forms of
worship is to insult God; and every mass that is ever offered upon the
Romish altar is an insult to heaven, and a blasphemy to God who is a
Spirit. Every time any form of worship by procession, celebration, or
ceremonial of man's invention is offered to God, it is offered in
defiance of this word of Christ, and cannot and will not be received;
however earnest people may be they have violated the imperative canon
of God's Word; and in fighting for rubrics they have gone against the
eternal rubric that God as a Spirit must be worshipped in spirit and in
truth.
The second reason given is, that God is a Spirit. If God were material,
it might be right to worship him with material substances; if God were
like to ourselves, it might be well for us to give a sacrifice
congenial to humanity; but being as he is, pure spirit, he must be
worshipped in spirit. I like the remark made by Trapp in his commentary
on this passage, when he says that perhaps the Savior is even here
bringing down God to our comprehension; "for," saith he, "God is above
all notion, all name." Certainly, this we know, that anything which
associates him with the grossness of materialism is infinitely removed
from the truth. Said Augustine, "When I am not asked what God is, I
think I know, but when I try to answer that question, I find I know
nothing." If the Eternal were such an one as thou art, O man, he might
be pleased with thy painted windows. But what a child's toy must
coloured glass be to God! I can sit and gaze upon a cathedral with all
its magnificence of architecture, and think what a wonderful exhibition
of human skill; but what must that be to God, who piles the heavens,
who digs the foundation of the deep, who leads Arcturus with his sons?
Why, it must be to him the veriest trifle, a mere heap of stones. I
delight to hear the swell of organs, the harmony of sweet voices, the
Gregorian chant, but what is this artistic sound to him more than
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal? As a sight, I admire the
choristers and priests, and the whole show of a grand ceremonial; but
do you believe that God is imposed upon by those frocks and gowns of
white, and blue, and scarlet, and fine linen? It seems to me as if such
a notion brings down God to the level of a silly woman who is fond of
finery. The infinite God, who spreads out the heavens and scatters
stars with both his hands, whom heaven and earth cannot contain, to
whom space is but a speck, and time is as nothing, do you think that he
dwelleth in temples made with hands, that is to say, of man's building?
And is he to be worshipped with your organs, and your roodscreens, and
your gaudy millinery? He laugheth at them, he treadeth on them as being
less than nothing and vanity. Spiritual worship is what he regardeth,
because he is a Spirit. My brethren, if you could get together a
procession of worlds, if you could make the stars walk along the
streets of some great new Jerusalem, dressed in their brightest array;
if instead of the songs of a few boys or men you could catch the
sonnets of eternal ages; if instead of a few men to officiate as
priests you could enlist time, eternity, heaven and earth to be the
priesthood, yet all this would be to him but as a company of
grasshoppers, and he would take up the whole as a very little thing.
But let me tell you that even God himself, great as he is, does not
despise the tear that drops from a repentant eye, nor does he neglect
the sigh that comes from a sinner's soul. He thinks more of your
repentance than of your incense, and more of your prayers than of your
priesthoods. He views with pleasure your love and your faith, for these
are spiritual things in which he can take delight; but your
architecture, your music and your fine arts, though they lavish their
treasures at his feet, are less than nothing and vanity. Ye know not
what spirit ye are of. If ye think to worship my God with all these
inventions of man, ye dream like fools. I feel glowing within me the
old iconoclastic spirit. Would God we had men now like Knox or Luther,
who with holy indignation would pull in pieces those wicked mockeries
of the Most High, against which our soul feels a hallowed indignation
as we think of his loftiness, and of that poor paltry stuff with which
men degrade his name.
IV. WHAT THEN? What is the practical drift of this? Why two things.
The first is, my dear brothers and sisters, I mean you who have learned
to worship God in spirit and in truth, who have got above the beggarly
elements of the outward, and can worship him in spirit and in truth,
what then? Why, in the first place, let us be particularly jealous of
anything which looks at all like going back to ceremonialism. As a
matter of taste I have a great liking for noble architecture. Many an
hour have I lingered in the ruins of some splendid abbey or our own
majestic buildings still used for sacred worship. I have a great
delight in a well-painted window. I cannot say that I like most
Dissenting painted windows, because they look to me as if they were a
sort of would be if you could. I cannot say I have any kind of liking
for most of our Dissenting Gothic, for it seems to me such a paltry
thing to build a front just like St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, and
then as if to cheat the Lord to make the back part shabby. I cannot say
I care for that kind of thing. But a really splendid place of worship I
admire, as a matter of taste. I like an organ very well, as a matter of
musical taste. But, my brethren, I feel that these are times when we
must stand out even against allowable things, lest going one step we
should go another. I do pray you therefore if you have any influence
anywhere always use it in favor of simplicity, and if you see at any
time in the churches of which you are the members a tendency to creep
on to something a little nearer, a little towards the way of Rome, cry
"Halt!" Let us rather go back to the barns in which our fathers
worshipped, or better still to the hill side, and to the green sward
than go forward to anything like symbolism, which will tempt the soul
away from spiritual worship. We ought ourselves to guard against
falling into formalism by means of simplicity, for we may do it the one
way as well as the other, by laying it down as a rule that a service
must begin with prayer or begin with singing, that the preacher must
preach at such a time in the service, that the service must commence,
continue, and conclude in some fixed fashion; that seems to me to have
a tendency to breed another form of ritualism inconsistent with
worshipping God in spirit and in truth. I am afraid I have hardly grace
enough to worship God by two or three hours together in silence as our
Quaker friends do. I do enjoy a quarter of an hour's silence every now
and then; to sit quite still seems to me to be an admirable way of
getting into contact with God. Our service is so much words, words,
words, that I am almost afraid you get to think as much of words as
other people do of banners, and flags, and so on. Now, to sit still, to
get might away from words, if so your heart keeps to God, is better
even than preaching and singing. Juan De Yaldes, a Catholic, but a good
Protestant for all that, remarks that the vulgar in seeking to remember
Christ by the crucifix do not exercise their mind but stop at the
crucifix, and therefore that which was intended to be a help becomes a
hindrance; so the learned get their bibles which should help them to
think upon divine things, but being content with having read the letter
of Scripture they often fail to reach the spiritual truth which it
containeth, and so after all do not worship God. Remember that while we
should be jealous of anything which would make it easy to be formal of
worship which might be adopted, yet we may still after all have missed
the main thing, the worshipping of God in spirit and in truth.
Let us make it a matter of heart-searching as to whether we ourselves
have been in the habit of worshipping the Father in spirit and in
truth. Dear friends, I am jealous of some of you that you do not do
this. If the preacher happens to be away you do not feel in so good a
frame; somebody else takes my place, and there are certain feeble folk
among you who feel as if the sabbath had lost its enjoyment. But God is
here, and you might worship God as much surely without me as with me;
and though the instruction received from one man may not seem so
edifying as that which may come from another, and possibly may not be
so, yet still if your object be the worship of God, which should be the
main object of our gathering, surely you should do that as well under
the ministry of Mr. A. as Mr. B. I am afraid too that many of you are
content with singing through the hymn; now all that singing which is
not thought-singing is of no use; you may have very sweet voices but
God does not regard your voice, he hears your heart, and if your heart
does not sing you have not sung at all. When we stand up to pray it may
be that the preacher's words may happen to be suitable to your case,
but it is not prayer so far as you are concerned, though it may be as
far as he is, unless you join in it. Recollect that if you do not put
your hearts into the worship of God, you might for that matter as well
be at home as here; you are better here than at home for other reasons,
because you are in the way where good may come to you; but for
worship's sake you might as well have been in bed as here. You who have
no spiritual worship may even clog the devotions of those who have; an
invisible savor of death unto death may be stealing from you, helping
to pollute or to render dead the worship of those who truly adore God.
At any rate, my dear hearers, if you have not with your whole hearts
loved and worshipped God, repent over it, and pray the Holy Ghost to
make you spiritual. Go to Christ's cross, and trust in him; then, and
not till then, will you be capable of adoring the most High God in a
style in which he can accept your worship. God grant that this may be
impressed upon the hearts of all of us, that we may worship God in
spirit and in truth.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–John 4:1-30.