United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One who expects to get to heaven by pious observances and church-goings on the Sabbath, without being over-particular as to the morality of his conduct through the week." "Morality! do you pretend to say that I am an immoral man?" said Rowley, with much heat. "Don't get into a passion!" returned Lane, coolly. "That will not help us at all in this grave matter."
I am but a poor hunter and Mabel, I see, is fit to be an officer's lady. Do you think the girl will consent to quit all her beloved settlement usages, and her visitings and church-goings, to dwell with a plain guide and hunter up hereaway in the woods? Will she not in the end, crave her old ways, and a better man?" "A better man, Pathfinder, would be hard to find," returned the father.
To him the daily round of conventional existence, the visitings, the theatres, the church-goings, the talkings with well-dressed and highly cultured men and women, whose thoughts and life seemed to him to be deadly dull and uninteresting when contrasted with his own exciting life in the South Seas, palled upon and bored him to the verge of desperation.
If Christ died for us, what shall we do? What shall we ask God to help us to do? To that the second collect gives a clear answer at once Serve the living God. And how? By dead works? By mere outward forms and ceremonies, church-goings, psalm-singings, sermon-hearings? Not so.
How shall the bottomless pit, if we fall into it, be a pathway to the everlasting rock? David tells us, "Out of the deep have I cried unto Thee, O God." He cried to God not to himself, his own learning, prudence, talents to pull him out of that pit. Not to doctrines, books, church-goings not to the dearest earthly friend not to his own experiences, faith's assurances, frames and feelings.
And all the while they keep up their religion. Ay, they are often more attentive than ever to religion, because their consciences pinch them at times, and have to be silenced and drugged by continual church-goings and chapel-goings, and readings and prayings, in order that they may be able to say to themselves with Balaam, 'Thus saith Balaam, he who heard the word of God, and had the knowledge of the Most High.
Not to the dearest friend he had on earth; for they had forsaken him, could not understand him, thought him perhaps beside himself. Not to his own good works, almsgivings, church-goings, church-buildings. Not to his own experiences, faith's assurances, frames or feelings. The matter was too terrible to be plastered over in that way, or in any way.
And how shall we learn this? How shall the bottomless pit, if we fall into it, be but a pathway to the everlasting rock? David tells us: 'Out of the deep have I cried unto thee, O Lord. He cried to God. Not to himself, his own learning, talents, wealth, prudence, to pull him out of that pit. Not to princes, nobles, and great men. Not to doctrines, books, church-goings.
Sermons, church-goings, almsgivings; leaving the Church and turning Dissenters or Roman Catholics; joining this sect and that sect; nothing will rid a man of his superstitious fear: nothing but believing the blessed message of the text. And what does the text say? It says this, 'God is love. God does not hate thee, He loves thee.
How we struggle and rage at first at the very thought of the coming misery; and are ready to say, God will not do this! He cannot cannot be so unjust, so cruel, as to bring this misery on me. What have I done to deserve it? Or, if I have deserved it, what have these innocents done? Why should they be punished for my sins? After all my prayers, too, and my church-goings, and my tryings to be good.
Word Of The Day