See
him, again, now assailing or now defending a church's secular privileges,
and he knowing no more, all the time, what a church has been set up for
on earth than the man in the moon. What a penalty his defence is and his
support to a church of Christ, and what an incubus his membership must
be! Or, see him, again, making long speeches and many prayers for the
extension of the kingdom of Christ, and all the time spending ten times
more on wine or whisky or tobacco, or on books or pictures or foreign
travel, than he gives to the cause of home or foreign missions. And so
on, all through our hypocritical and self-blinded life. Through such
stages, and to such a finish, does the formalist pass from his
thoughtless and neglected youth to his hardened, blinded, self-seeking
life, spent in the ostensible service of the church of Christ. If the
light that is in such men be darkness, how great is that darkness! We
may all well shudder as we hear our Lord saying to ministers and members
and church defenders and church supporters, like ourselves: 'Now ye say,
We see; therefore your sin remaineth.
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