SUBSTITUTES FOR HOLINESS.

When a Church or a denomination loses its primitive piety and supernatural power, it al ways musters up a host of substitutes for its loss of purity. God has declared that He is the only Savior, and that he will not give His glory to another. Isa. xlii. The true glory of the Church is its extreme simplicity in doctrine and worship, and the mighty indwelling of the personal Sanctifier in the individual souls of the Church. Anything that hinders these is a positive curse to the Church, however attractive it may seem to the reason of man.

Those who see things in the light of eternity can readily discover that even in the temple of Methodism the niches are being pretty well stocked with little idols, that are being worshiped instead of Jesus; things thrust before the people's eyes as substitutes for real holiness. Some of these are the following:

1. Mental Culture. Can't we have a few brains without this boast and strut over them that ministers and people are everywhere indulging in? Can't we have a little learning without getting down and saying prayers to it? This thing called "culture" is just as really an idol, in the Protestant Churches of to-day, as Diana was in Ephesus, and just as truly worshiped by some preachers and church-members as Mary is in the Church of Rome. The judgment day will prove what I say. There are preachers throughout the Church who, every day, think more about culture than about Jesus, who every week read more on art and science than they do the Bible or holy books, who talk more about culture than of holy things, nay, many of them positively nauseate a conversation on personal holiness, and this is an absolute proof that culture is worshiped in their thoughts, words and reading, more than Jesus is.

Culture is not a good per se, in itself. Learning is only good when in subjection to God.

When not in subjection to the will of God, it is a vain, proud, self-conceited, boastful, vile usurper of the Holy Spirit, and has sent many a smart professor of religion to the flames of hell, and is sending some more there.

After all this strut over modern culture, what is it? It is a subtle worship of matter. The science of our religious schools is that of sun-waves, sand grains, and fish-scales, far more than it is of God and the immortal soul. When boiled down, it is the science of dirt more than the science of Deity. In the college professor, the preacher, the pulpit, the so-called religious newspaper, the Sunday-school, you can see that this petty god of culture is used as a substitute for holiness and the power of God.

2. Statistics. The Church is idolizing her statistical tables, and is far more anxious to crowd in great numbers than to crowd true holiness into the members. The centenary of Methodism brought on an era of statistical boast and brag. In missionary and anniversary speeches, in the Church papers, on platform, in pulpit, everywhere and always the perpetual changes are rung on our big statistics, until it is a stench in the nostrils of God. The curse of David for gloating over the statistics of Israel, is utterly unheeded by the proud Church boasters of this age. The statistical table is taking the place of the baptism of holiness. When the judgment day cuts down our bloated Church statistics to their exact truth, it will spoil many a boast of Church pride.

3. Church Machinery and Ritualism have, in all ages, been the substitutes for holiness, when the power of God has been lost. Some are taking the initial steps of introducing ritualism into the Methodist Church. Churches that never have any thorough revivals, and that want nothing to do with holiness, must resort to hired psalm chanting, and alternate verse readings, and then to printed prayers and lighted candles in due time. As some proud, fashionable, women take up filthy lap-dogs as substitutes for the raising of children, so in all ages the Church has taken up the vile lap-dog of ritualism when she has not had vital holiness enough to give birth to true converts. When a church loses heart holiness, it must try ritualism, or machinery, or lyceums, or concerts, or festivals, or "sacred dramas," or oyster suppers, or some thing as a miserable substitute for primitive power. It has ever been that when the visible Church does not raise healthy children for God, she raises lap-dogs for the devil. This may sound harsh to some, but eternity will prove it true. Hundreds of Churches in Methodism have not enough holiness to produce revivals and clear, happy conversions, and as a substitute for revivals and the Holy Ghost, they feel compelled to go at something; they must raise dainty pets, and spend all their strength on a trained choir, or nursing a dainty manuscript minister, or working up little giggling, dissipating Church socials, or little Sunday-school dramas, or a soul-starving literary lyceum, or a star lecturing course, or an old folk's concert, or some wax doll arrangement to atone for the Church's lack of purity and power.

God will never accept these little Church poodles as substitutes for holiness and heaven- born children. The little petty idols being stuck up in some Protestant churches are just as abominable to God as the big idols stuck up in Romanism.

4. Devotion to mere ecclesiasticism is being made a substitute for holiness and personal devotion to Jesus. We have denounced Roman priests for being devoted to Romanism instead of Christ, but the same impure, passionate devotion to mere Church system is fearfully spreading in Methodism.

You can hear from Methodist pulpits many an innuendo against the old time sobbing and crying at a mourner's bench, many an apology for modern Church vices, many a cold fling at entire sanctification, yet these men are devoted to the mere Church system, and that passes as a substitute for their personal holiness. A man may not be intensely devoted to the deep, holy, doctrines of Methodism, he may not be devoted to the historic experience of old Methodists, but if he is a devotee to the mere Church system, this is taken as all sufficient.

How many rich laymen, and fashionable ladies, and profound preachers in Methodism, are devoted to a mere Church system, will bluster and fight for their Church, and then take the flattering unction to their poor souls that such devotion to a Church system is a substitute for personal heart purity. A true Methodist is one that is personally and entirely de voted to Jesus, and not to an ecclesiasticism. God will not give His glory to another. He will not allow even Methodist ecclesiasticism to have that warm attachment of heart and mind which he demands for Himself. Many are de voting themselves to their Churchism that are not devoting themselves to Jesus.

Methodism may bow down and worship her culture and brains; her ecclesiastics and orators may gloat over her great statistics of unconverted members; she may complacently smile over her millionaires, her Church machinery, and national high Church tendencies; her officers and office-seekers may be enamored with her ecclesiasticism, and go on in a perpetual Church brag, but one and all of these things combined can never form a substitute for that personal heart holiness and power of the Holy Ghost, without which any Church system is a hollow mockery to God.

Let us look at these things in the light of the white throne, and burning world. Let us not be deceived! God will allow nothing, in earth or heaven, as a substitute for himself and the in dwelling of His sanctifying Spirit.