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Updated: June 20, 2025
'The blessing of all the gods on our good Queen! 'Health and happiness to the mother of her people! 'Death and destruction to her enemies! these, and cries of the same kind, came from the people, not as a mere lip-service, but evidently, from the tone in which they were uttered, prompted by real sentiments of love, such as it seems to me never before can have existed toward a supreme and absolute prince.
Her mother, to whom we related all we had heard, gave us further particulars of what the pious and indefatigable Amelia used to do. Ah Esther, her religion was not mere "lip-service." The Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ assisted her, and she might have said with truth, I show "my faith by my works."
Just as an English gentleman is the most modest person imaginable, and the most backward about offering lip-service in praise of his own achievements or his country's achievements, so, in the same superlative degree, some of his newspapers are the most blatant of boasters.
I believe your clergy know no more of the real doctrines of Christianity, those deep and mystical truths underlying the teachings of Christ, than the child at his mother's knee. I have been to your great cathedrals and churches. I saw only lip-service and routine.
"Oh, if that is all, just fetch the stool; and I will do my best, cousin." "I pray you be not so vexatious; you always used to do it nicely, without any stool, Ruth." "Ah, but you are grown since then, and become a famous man, John Ridd, and a member of the nobility. Go your way, and win your spurs. I want no lip-service." Being at the end of my wits, I did even as she ordered me.
I love no one, expect no love from any one, but I will make humanity a slave to me; and the lip-service of them who hate me in their hearts, shall be as pleasant jingling music to my ear, as if it were quite sincere! I will speak to this girl; she is not mad perchance she may be."
These, however, are but exceptions to the general Christian rule, viz.: that the Omniscient careth only for heart-service; and that, before Him, all mere lip-service or machine-service, is simply an abomination. A less innocent kind of praying is one of the religious humbugs of the bloody and cruel Sandwich Islands form of heathenism.
He will endeavor to keep himself free from lip-service and from ancestor-worship, holding himself derelict to his duty if he should fail to admit frankly that in every masterpiece of the past, however transcendent its merits, there must needs be much that is temporary admixt with more that is permanent, many things which pleased its author's countrymen in his own time and which do not appeal to us, even tho we can perceive also what is eternal and universal, even tho we read into every masterpiece much that the author's contemporaries had not our eyes to perceive.
"Leave something to ask Him to-morrow." But Laura, knowing very well that the Lord our God is a jealous God, was mindful not to scrimp in lip-service, or to shirk the minutest ceremony by means of which He might be propitiated and won over.
To pray to God? Pray to Him here, then, under the flash of His lightning! in the roll of His thunder! beneath His cathedral-canopy of clouds! Pray to Him with all your hearts, your brains, your reason, your intelligence, and leave mere lip-service and mockery to priests; and to these poor children, who, as yet, know no better than to obey tyrants! Would you find out God?
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