A divine religion
By J. C. Philpot
Our great desire for ourselves in personal experience and
in all that we bring before our readers, either as written by our own pen or
that of others, is a faith which stands not in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God. We dearly love vital religion; we embrace, with all the
affections of our heart, the power of God, as put forth in a sinner's soul;
we see more and more the deceitfulness and hypocrisy of a religion in the
letter and in the flesh, and we see more and more the beauty and
blessedness, the grace and glory of a revealed Christ, and of his divine
kingdom set up in the heart. Husks and shells are all that the letter gives.
Marrow, fatness, honey, milk, wine, yes, more, the very flesh and blood of
the Lamb—this heavenly food in the eating and drinking of which is eternal
life, the Holy Spirit gives to the hungry and thirsty saints of God, when he
applies the living word with a divine power to their hearts.
Get, dear friends, a taste of the sweetness and
blessedness of a divine religion, and it will kill you to all other.
It will be a light in your understanding, to see the miserable end of a
graceless profession; a life in your soul, to stir you up to seek more and
more of the inward kingdom of God; a power in your affections, to fix them
more on things above; and feeling in your conscience, to depart more and
more from evil.