"How often do you fall in with one who feels
himself above the superstition of real prayer; who is conscious of no personal
relations beyond this world; to whom the whole expression and organism of
religion is but a discipline for social duty, ---- a discipline necessary for
the feeble, becoming for the good, but empty for the wise; who is rather its
patron than its disciple, and maintains churches for the world as he keeps a
nursery for his children, with as little idea of spending his own adult and
earnest life there; and who looks on times and places of devotion, on the voice
of contrition and aspiration, on the swelling hymn, on the impassioned words of
psalmist and prophet, and the memorials of a Savior's sacrifice, as an
overwrought provision for sustaining the daily moralities of life.
Serving
God's will in the constant course of a faithful, manly, kindly career, is out
of his element; he has no burden to lay down, no height to seize: always equal
to himself, he wants no reminder, appropriates no confession, and receives
every ideal demand upon him as flowing water receives falling sparks. And, so,
he looks down on all special worship as a weakness to which he cannot descend;
and, if ever social connection or hereditary ties commit him to the interests
of a Christian church, he upholds it for others rather than himself instead of
humbly offering in it the best that he has, and all that he is, to the real and
living God." James Martineau.
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