The godly man, it will ever be found, is the best churchman. It will not do to say: I can be just as good a Christian and stay away from the sacrament of the Lord's Table,--it is only a form. Granting it is, it is a form which God has commanded by and through which He communicates life and salvation to men's souls. You do not despise to drink the water of the Mississippi River because it flows through pipes and comes out at the faucet. And so you ought not reject life, grace, and salvation promised by God, because He has laid it down for you in the partaking of bread and wine in His sacrament, which is the channel by and through which He conveys it to your soul. The same may be said of all the ordinances of religion,--prayer, the reading of the Bible, the saying of prayers. These things must be attended to. They are the forms in which it expresses itself--takes shape. And yet, we must beware of mistaking the shape for the substance, the shell for the kernel, the body for the soul. Going to church as a mere form saves no one; neither does going to the Sacrament. To read the Bible, for instance, merely to find out what a fine literary product it is, has no religious value; and to mumble one's prayers in a thoughtless and spiritless way, our Lord tells us, is worthless, yes, it may be an abomination to Him. What good does food do you if you do not digest it, take the strength out of it, the necessary qualities? Equally so with the spiritual food. Religion as a form, a mere external life, a show, avails nothing; rather, it is a snare of delusion by which men may deceive themselves and others.
When, then,--that is the question to which our text leads up,--when have we the form of godliness together with the power thereof? In order to have true religion, two things are necessary, the new birth and the new life. First, the new birth. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Religion, first of all, above all, aims at and affects the heart. It is this which is primarily concerned. "This people," the Lord complains, "draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." "Give me, my son," my daughter, "thy _heart_," is the request of the merciful Lord.