Chapter 2: False Professors. time in a busy season, and you will see they begin to divide. Some hesitate; some doubt; some raise objections; and some resolutely refuse. Some enlist at once, because they see it will do great good. Others stand back till you devise some means to excite their selfishness in its favor. What causes the difference? Some of them are serving their own gods.
12. Those are of this character, who are more interested in other subjects than in religion.
If you find them more ready to talk on other subjects; more easily excited by them, more awake to learn the news, they are serving their own gods. What multitudes are more excited by the bank question, or the question about war, or about the fire, or anything of a worldly nature, than about revivals, missions, or anything connected with the interests of religion.
You find them all engaged about politics or speculation; but if you bring up the subject of religion, ah, they are afraid of excitement! and talk about animal feeling! Showing that religion is not the subject that is nearest their hearts. A man is always most easily excited on that subject that lies nearest his heart. Bring that up, and he is interested. When you can talk early and late about the news and other worldly topics, and when you cannot possibly be interested in the subject of religion, you know that your heart is not in it; and if you pretend to be a servant of God, you are a hypocrite.
13. When persons are more jealous for their own fame than for God's glory, it shows that they live for themselves, and serve their own gods.
You see a man more vexed or grieved by what is said against him than against God; whom does he serve who is his God, himself or Jehovah? There is a minister thrown into a fever because somebody has said a word derogatory to his scholarship, or his dignity, or his infallibility, while he is as cool as ice at all the indignities thrown upon the blessed God. Is that man a follower of Paul, willing to be considered a fool for the cause of Christ? Did that man ever take the first lesson in religion? If he had, he would rejoice to have his name cast out as evil for the cause of religion. No, he is not serving God; he is serving his own gods.
14. Those are serving their own gods, who are not make salvation of souls the great and leading object of their lives.
The end of all religious institutions, that which gives value to them all, is the salvation of sinners. The end for which Christ lives, and for which he has left his church in the world, is the salvation of sinners. This is the business which God sets his servants about, and if any man be not doing this, as his business as the leading and main object of his life, he is not serving Jehovah, he is serving his own gods.