Spiritual Religion by Howard Crosby, D. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 18, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 24.

Spiritual Religion.

By Howard Crosby, D. D.

MAN has an unspiritual nature and tendency. We often hear of man's religious instincts, and such a one is said to be naturally religious, but the religion in all such cases is not a spiritual one. It is a mere sentimentality, the expression of ennui or weariness with earth's deceitful joys, a mere negation, or else it is a devotion to form and manner, to routine and ceremony. In neither case is there a particle of godliness in the religion. Man is by nature sinful and hates God. A religion to suit him must be a religion that degrades God to his own level and makes his worship a fraud; and that is a religion virtually without God. The Jews, with a perfect religion given them by God, with priests and prophets to remind them of a spiritual service, and with a written word from God demanding the homage of heart and life, perverted all this more and more until nothing but a form of religion remained, with all the spirit gone. It was the regular process of the human heart to hate, oppose, and crush out, all that is truly divine, and that because of sin, because the divine testifies against sin and brings it ever before the soul. Hence, when the gospel came to the Jews, instead of being prepared for it as they ought to have been, and would have been if they had rightly used Moses and the prophets, they rejected it with scorn and violence, persecuting its apostles after crucifying the Messiah himself. Paul, who for a time took part in this scorn and violence, but who through a deep experience was brought into the humble and energetic service of the Messiah he had himself persecuted, put the whole truth in a succinct sentence when he said, "The carnal mind is enmity against God."

This natural enmity to God and spiritual things will show itself in acts of opposition. It will develop as all feeling develops, into action, and it will attempt to justify itself by action corresponding to the feeling. In refined times and places, it will not take the rough form of bodily persecution. It may accommodate itself to all the requirements of polite society. But both the enmity and its activity are as potent in these circumstances as in those of the ruder peoples. A literature that makes light of spiritual religion, a philosophy that attacks it, a manner of life that wounds or corrupts it, are some of the forms of this enmity which prevail now among us in this nineteenth century, and in the countries most civilized and where Christianity is most thoroughly disseminated. The mob rushing on Paul could not do as much harm to the cause of truth as these polished assailants of spiritual religion, who wear a mask of friendship and courtesy in their onsets. They carry away many of our inexperienced youth, and give the fatal bias to their lives. The world's fashion is on the side of enmity to God, and into this fashion the mass of youth pours. On every side in this false society are the assaults upon truth made. In the name of art and literature everything is offered to excite the sensual passions, and in the name of business success everything is offered to promote the narrowest selfishness of the human heart. To remain outside of this maelstrom is to be peculiar and puritanic. He who has the courage to remain outside must incur ridicule, contempt, slander, and social ostracism. Blessed, indeed, of the Lord is he who cheerfully and happily thus takes up his cross to follow his Master! Blessed is he who by his singular life bears testimony against a godless world and the nominal Christianity that fraternizes with it!—Howard Crosby, D. D.