“He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there
is no beauty that we should desire Him.”—Isaiah liii. 2.
“Religion is a weariness;” such is the judgment commonly passed,
often avowed, concerning the greatest of blessings which Almighty God
has bestowed upon us. And when God gave the blessing, He at the same
time foretold that such would be the judgment of the world upon it,
even as manifested in the gracious Person of Him whom He sent to give
it to us. “He hath no form nor comeliness,” says the Prophet, speaking
of our Lord and Saviour, “and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty
that we should desire Him.” He declared beforehand, that to man His
religion would be uninteresting and distasteful. Not that this
prediction excuses our deadness to it; this dislike of the religion
given us by God Himself, seen as it is on all sides of us,—of religion
in all its parts, whether its doctrines, its precepts, its polity, its
worship, its social influence,—this distaste for its very name, must
obviously be an insult to the Giver. But the text speaks of it as a
fact, without commenting on the guilt involved in it; and as such I
wish you to consider it, as far as this may be done in reverence and
seriousness. Putting aside for an instant the thought of the
ingratitude and the sin which indifference to Christianity implies, let
us, as far as we dare, view it merely as a matter of fact, after the
manner of the text, and form a judgment on the probable consequences of
it. Let us take the state of the case as it is found, and survey it
dispassionately, as even an unbeliever might survey it, without at the
moment considering whether it is sinful or not; as a misfortune, if we
will, or a strange accident, or a necessary condition of our
nature,—one of the phenomena, as it may be called, of the present
world.
Let me then review human life in some of its stages and conditions,
in order to impress upon you the fact of this contrariety between
ourselves and our Maker: He having one will, we another; He declaring
one thing to be good for us, and we fancying other objects to be our
good.
1. “Religion is a weariness,” alas! so feel even children before
they can well express their meaning. Exceptions of course now and then
occur; and of course children are always more open to religious
impressions and visitations than grown persons. They have many good
thoughts and good desires, of which, in after life, the multitude of
men seem incapable. Yet who, after all, can have a doubt that, in spite
of the more intimate presence of God's grace with those who have not
yet learned to resist it, still, on the whole, religion is a weariness
to children? Consider their amusements, their enjoyments,—what they
hope, what they devise, what they scheme, and what they dream about
themselves in time future, when they grow up; and say what place
religion holds in their hearts. Watch the reluctance with which they
turn to religious duties, to saying their prayers, or reading the
Bible; and then judge. Observe, as they get older, the influence which
the fear of the ridicule of their companions has in deterring them even
from speaking of religion, or seeming to be religious. Now the dread of
ridicule, indeed, is natural enough; but why should religion inspire
ridicule? What is there absurd in thinking of God? Why should we be
ashamed of worshipping Him? It is unaccountable, but it is natural. We
may call it an accident, or what we will; still it is an undeniable
fact, and that is what I insist upon. I am not forgetful of the
peculiar character of children's minds: sensible objects first meet
their observation; it is not wonderful that they should at first be
inclined to limit their thoughts to things of sense. A distinct
profession of faith, and a conscious maintenance of principle, may
imply a strength and consistency of thought to which they are as yet
unequal. Again, childhood is capricious, ardent, light-hearted; it
cannot think deeply or long on any subject. Yet all this is not enough
to account for the fact in question—why they should feel this distaste
for the very subject of religion. Why should they be ashamed of paying
reverence to an unseen, all-powerful God, whose existence they do not
disbelieve? Yet they do feel ashamed of it. Is it that they are ashamed
of themselves, not of their religion; feeling the inconsistency of
professing what they cannot fully practise? This refinement does not
materially alter the view of the case; for it is merely their own
acknowledgment that they do not love religion as much as they ought.
No; we seem compelled to the conclusion, that there is by nature some
strange discordance between what we love and what God loves. So much,
then, on the state of boyhood.
2. “Religion is a weariness.” I will next take the case of young
persons when they first enter into life. Here I may appeal to some
perhaps who now hear me. Alas! my brethren, is it not so? Is not
religion associated in your minds with gloom, melancholy, and
weariness? I am not at present going so far as to reprove you for it,
though I might well do so, if I did, perhaps you might at once turn
away, and I wish you calmly to think the matter over, and bear me
witness that I state the fact correctly. It is so; you cannot deny it.
The very terms “religion,” “devotion,” “piety,” “conscientiousness,”
“mortification,” and the like, you find to be inexpressibly dull and
cheerless: you cannot find fault with them, indeed, you would if you
could; and whenever the words are explained in particulars and
realized, then you do find occasion for exception and objection. But
though you cannot deny the claims of religion used as a vague and
general term, yet how irksome, cold, uninteresting, uninviting, does it
at best appear to you! how severe its voice! how forbidding its aspect!
With what animation, on the contrary, do you enter into the mere
pursuits of time and the world! What bright anticipations of joy and
happiness flit before your eyes! How you are struck and dazzled at the
view of the prizes of this life, as they are called! How you admire the
elegancies of art, the brilliance of wealth, or the force of intellect!
According to your opportunities you mix in the world, you meet and
converse with persons of various conditions and pursuits, and are
engaged in the numberless occurrences of daily life. You are full of
news; yon know what this or that person is doing, and what has befallen
him; what has not happened, which was near happening, what may happen.
You are full of ideas and feelings upon all that goes on around you.
But, from some cause or other, religion has no part, no sensible
influence, in your judgment of men and things. It is out of your way.
Perhaps you have your pleasure parties; you readily take your share in
them time after time; you pass continuous hours in society where you
know that it is quite impossible even to mention the name of religion.
Your heart is in scenes and places when conversation on serious
subjects is strictly forbidden by the rules of the world's propriety. I
do not say we should discourse on religious subjects, wherever we go; I
do not say we should make an effort to discourse on them at any time,
nor that we are to refrain from social meetings in which religion does
not lie on the surface of the conversation: but I do say, that when men
find their pleasure and satisfaction to lie in society which proscribes
religion, and when they deliberately and habitually prefer those
amusements which have necessarily nothing to do with religion, such
persons cannot view religion as God views it. And this is the point:
that the feelings of our hearts on the subject of religion are
different from the declared judgment of God; that we have a natural
distaste for that which He has said is our chief good.
3. Now let us pass to the more active occupations of life. Here,
too, religion is confessedly felt to be wearisome, it is out of place.
The transactions of worldly business, speculations in trade, ambitious
hopes, the pursuit of knowledge, the public occurrences of the day,
these find a way directly to the heart, they rouse, they influence. It
is superfluous to go about to prove this innate power over us of things
of time and sense, to make us think and act. The name of religion, on
the other hand, is weak and impotent; it contains no spell to kindle
the feelings of man, to make the heart beat with anxiety, and to
produce activity and perseverance. The reason is not merely that men
are in want of leisure, and are sustained in a distressing continuance
of exertion, by their duties towards those dependent on them. They have
their seasons of relaxation, they turn for a time from their ordinary
pursuits; still religion does not attract them, they find nothing of
comfort or satisfaction in it. For a time they allow themselves to be
idle. They want an object to employ their minds upon; they pace to and
fro in very want of an object; yet their duties to God, their future
hopes in another state of being, the revelation of God's mercy and
will, as contained in Scripture, the news of redemption, the gift of
regeneration, the sanctities, the devotional heights, the nobleness and
perfection which Christ works in His elect, do not suggest themselves
as fit subjects to dispel their weariness. Why? Because religion makes
them melancholy, say they, and they wish to relax. Religion is a
labour, it is a weariness, a greater weariness than the doing nothing
at all. “Wherefore,” says Solomon, “is there a price in the hand of a
fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it[1]?”
4. But this natural contrariety between man and his Maker is still
more strikingly shown by the confessions of men of the world who have
given some thought to the subject, and have viewed society with
somewhat of a philosophical spirit. Such men treat the demands of
religion with disrespect and negligence, on the ground of their being
unnatural. They say, “It is natural for men to love the world for its
own sake; to be engrossed in its pursuits, and to set their hearts on
the rewards of industry, on the comforts, luxuries, and pleasures of
this life. Man would not be man if he could be made otherwise; he would
not be what he was evidently intended for by his Maker.” Let us pass by
the obvious answer that might be given to this objection; it is
enough for my purpose that it is commonly urged, recognizing as
it does the fact of the disagreement existing between the claims of
God's word, and the inclinations and natural capacities of man. Many,
indeed, of those unhappy men who have denied the Christian faith, treat
the religious principle altogether as a mere unnatural, eccentric state
of mind, a peculiar untoward condition of the affections to which
weakness will reduce a man, whether it has been brought on by anxiety,
oppressive sorrow, bodily disease, excess of imagination or the like,
and temporary or permanent, according to the circumstances of the
disposing cause; a state to which we all are liable, as we are liable
to any other mental injury, but unmanly and unworthy of our dignity as
rational beings. Here again it is enough for our purpose, that it is
allowed by these persons that the love of religion is unnatural and
inconsistent with the original condition of our minds.
The same remark may be made upon the notions which secretly prevail
in certain quarters at the present day, concerning the unsuitableness
of Christianity to an enlightened age. Men there are who look upon the
inspired word of God with a sort of indulgence, as if it had its use,
and had done service in its day; that in times of ignorance it awed and
controlled fierce barbarians, whom nothing else could have subdued; but
that from its very claim to be divine and infallible, and its
consequent unalterableness, it is an obstacle to the improvement of the
human race beyond a certain point, and must ultimately fall before the
gradual advancement of mankind in knowledge and virtue. In other words,
the literature of the day is weary of Revealed Religion.
5. Once more; that religion is in itself a weariness is seen even in
the conduct of the better sort of persons, who really on the whole are
under the influence of its spirit. So dull and uninviting is calm and
practical religion, that religious persons are ever exposed to the
temptation of looking out for excitements of one sort or other, to make
it pleasurable to them. The spirit of the Gospel is a meek, humble,
gentle, unobtrusive spirit. It doth not cry nor lift up its voice in
the streets, unless called upon by duty so to do, and then it does it
with pain. Display, pretension, conflict, are unpleasant to it. What
then is to be thought of persons who are ever on the search after
novelties to make religion interesting to them; who seem to find that
Christian activity cannot be kept up without unchristian party-spirit,
or Christian conversation without unchristian censoriousness? Why,
this; that religion is to them as to others, taken by itself, a
weariness, and requires something foreign to its own nature to make it
palatable. Truly it is a weariness to the natural man to serve God
humbly and in obscurity; it is very wearisome, and very monotonous, to
go on day after day watching all we do and think, detecting our secret
failings, denying ourselves, creating within us, under God's grace,
those parts of the Christian character in which we are deficient;
wearisome to learn modesty, love of insignificance, willingness to be
thought little of, backwardness to clear ourselves when slandered, and
readiness to confess when we are wrong; to learn to have no cares for
this world, neither to hope nor to fear, but to be resigned and
contented!
I may close these remarks, by appealing to the consciences of all
who have ever set about the work of religion in good earnest, whoever
they may be, whether they have made less, or greater progress in their
noble toil, whether they are matured saints, or feeble strugglers
against the world and the flesh. They have ever confessed how great
efforts were necessary to keep close to the commandments of God; in
spite of their knowledge of the truth, and their faith, in spite of the
aids and consolations they receive from above, still how often do their
corrupt hearts betray them! Even their privileges are often burdensome
to them, even to pray for the grace which in Christ is pledged to them
is an irksome task. They know that God's service is perfect freedom,
and they are convinced, both in their reason and from their own
experience of it, that it is true happiness; still they confess withal
the strange reluctance of their nature to love their Maker and His
Service. And this is the point in question; not only the mass of
mankind, but even the confirmed servants of Christ, witness to the
opposition which exists between their own nature and the demands of
religion.
This then is the remarkable fact which I proposed to show. Can we
doubt that man's will runs contrary to God's will—that the view which
the inspired word takes of our present life, and of our destiny, does
not satisfy us, as it rightly ought to do? that Christ hath no form nor
comeliness in our eyes; and though we see Him, we see no desirable
beauty in Him? That holy, merciful, and meek Saviour, the Eternal, the
Only-begotten Son of God, our friend and infinite benefactor—He who
left the glory of His Father and died for us, who has promised us the
overflowing riches of His grace both here and hereafter. He is a light
shining in a dark place, and “the darkness comprehendeth it not.”
“Light is come into the world and men love darkness rather than light.”
The nature of man is flesh, and that which is born of the flesh is
flesh, and ever must so remain; it never can discern, love, accept, the
holy doctrines of the Gospel. It will occupy itself in various ways, it
will take interest in things of sense and time, but it can never be
religious. It is at enmity with God.
And now we see what must at once follow from what has been said. If
our hearts are by nature set on the world for its own sake, and the
world is one day to pass away, what are they to be set on, what to
delight in, then? Say, how will the soul feel when, stripped of its
present attire, which the world bestows, it stands naked and shuddering
before the pure, tranquil, and severe majesty of the Lord its God, its
most merciful, yet dishonoured Maker and Saviour? What are to be the
pleasures of the soul in another life? Can they be the same as they are
here? They cannot; Scripture tells us they cannot; the world passeth
away—now what is there left to love and enjoy through a long eternity?
What a dark, forlorn, miserable eternity that will be!
It is then plain enough, though Scripture said not a word on the
subject, that if we would be happy in the world to come, we must make
us new hearts, and begin to love the things we naturally do not love.
Viewing it as a practical point, the end of the whole matter is this,
we must be changed; for we cannot, we cannot expect the system of the
universe to come over to us; the inhabitants of heaven, the numberless
creations of Angels, the glorious company of the Apostles, the goodly
fellowship of the Prophets, the noble army of Martyrs, the holy Church
universal, the Will and Attributes of God, these are fixed. We must go
over to them. In our Saviour's own authoritative words: “Verily,
verily, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God[2].” It is a plain matter of self-interest, to turn our thoughts to
the means of changing our hearts, putting out of the question our duty
towards God and Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer.
“He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we see Him, there is no
beauty that we should desire Him.” It is not His loss that we love Him
not, it is our loss. He is All-blessed, whatever becomes of us. He is
not less blessed because we are far from Him. It is we who are not
blessed, except as we approach Him, except as we are like Him, except
as we love Him. Woe unto us, if in the day in which He comes from
Heaven we see nothing desirable or gracious in His wounds; but instead,
have made for ourselves an ideal blessedness, different from that which
will be manifested to us in Him. Woe unto us, if we have made pride, or
selfishness, or the carnal mind, our standard of perfection and truth;
if our eyes have grown dim, and our hearts gross, as regards the true
light of men, and the glory of the Eternal Father. May He Himself save
us from our self-delusions, whatever they are, and enable us to give up
this world, that we may gain the next;—and to rejoice in Him, who had
no home of His own, no place to lay His head, who was poor and lowly,
and despised and rejected, and tormented and slain!
[1] Prov. xvii. 16.
[2] John iii. 3.