Chapter 6: Legal Religion 2. Their religious duties are performed as a task, and are not the result of the constraining love of God that burns within them.
Such a one does not delight in the exercise of religious affections; and as to communion with God, he knows nothing of it. He performs prayer as a task.
He betakes himself to religious duties as sick persons take medicine, not because they love it, but because they hope to derive some benefit from it.
And here let me ask those who are present tonight, Do you enjoy religious exercises, or do you perform them because you hope to receive benefit by them? Be honest, now, and answer this question, just according to the truth, and see where you stand.
3. They manifestly possess a legal spirit, and not a gospel spirit.
They do rather what they are obliged to do, in religion, and not what they love to do.
They have an eye to the commands of God, and yield obedience to his requirements, in performing religious duties, but do not engage in those things because they love them. They are always ready to inquire, in regard to duty, not so much how they can do good, as how they can be saved. There is just the difference between them, that there is between a convinced sinner and a true convert. The convinced sinner asks "What must I do to be saved?" The true convert asks "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" So this class of professors are constantly asking, "What must I do to get to heaven?" and not "What can I do to get other people there?" The principal object of such a professor of religion is not to save the world, but to save himself.
4. They are actuated by fear much more than by hope.
They perform their religious duties chiefly because they dare not omit them. They go to the communion, not because they love to meet Christ, or because they love to commune with their brethren, but because they dare not stay away. They fear the censures of the church, or they are afraid they shall be damned if they neglect it. They perform their closet duties not because they enjoy communion with God, but because they dare not neglect them. They have the spirit of slaves, and go about the service of God, as slaves go about the service of their master, feeling that they are obliged to do about so much, or be beaten with many stripes. So these professors feel as if they were obliged to have about so much religion, and perform about so many religious duties, or be lashed by conscience and lose their hopes.
And therefore they go through, painfully and laboriously enough, with about so many religious duties in a year, and that they call religion!
5. Their religion is not only produced by the fear of disgrace or the fear of hell, but it is mostly of a negative character.
They satisfy themselves, mostly, with doing nothing that is very bad. Having no spiritual views, they regard the law of God chiefly as a system of prohibitions, just to guard men from certain sins, and not as a system of benevolence fulfilled by love. And so, if they are moral in their conduct, and tolerably serious and decent in their general deportment, and perform