Chapter 2: False Professors.
15. Those who are doing but little for God, or who bring but little to pass for God, cannot properly be said to serve him.
Suppose you ask a professed servant of God. "What are you doing for God? Are you bringing anything to pass? Are you instrumental in the conversion of any sinners?
Are you making impressions in favor of religion, or helping forward the cause of Christ?
"He replies," Why I do not know have a hope; I sometimes think I do love God; but I do not know that I am doing any thing in particular at present." Is that man serving God! Or is he serving his own gods? "I talk to sinners some times," he says, "but they do not seem to feel much." Then YOU do not feel. If your heart be not in it, no wonder you cannot make sinners feel. Whereas, if you do your duty, with your heart in the work, sinners cannot help feeling.
16. Those who seek for happiness in religion, rather than for usefulness, are serving their own gods.
Their religion is entirely selfish. They want to enjoy religion, and are all the while inquiring how they can get happy frames of mind, and how they can be pleasurably excited in religious exercises. And they will go only to such meetings, and sit only under such preaching, as will make them happy; never asking the question whether that is the way to do the most good or not. Now, suppose your servant should do so, and be constantly contriving how to enjoy himself, and if he thought he could be most happy in the parlor, stretched on the sofa, with a pillow of down under his head, and another servant to fan him, refusing to do the work which you set him about, and which your interest urgently requires; instead of manifesting a desire to work for you, and a solicitude for your interest, and a willingness to lay himself out with all his powers in your service, he wants only to be happy! It is just so with those professed servants of Jehovah, who want to do nothing but sit on their handsome cushion, and have their minister feed them. Instead of seeking how to do good, they are only seeking to be happy. Their daily prayer is not, like that of the converted Saul of Tarsus,
"Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" but, "Lord, tell me how I can be happy." Is that the spirit of Jesus Christ? No, he said, "I delight to do thy will. O God." Is that the spirit of the apostle Paul? No, he threw of his upper garments at once, and made his arms bare foot the field of labor.
17. Those who make their own salvation their supreme object in religion, are serving their own gods.
There are multitudes in the church, who show by their conduct, and even avow in their language, that their leading object is to secure their own salvation, and their grand determination is to get their own souls planted on the firm battlements of the heavenly Jerusalem, and walk the golden fields of Canaan above. If the Bible is not in error all such characters will go to hell. Their religion is pure selfishness. And "he that will save his life shall lose it, and he that will lose his life for my sake, shall save it."