Ceremonialism, Quackery of – Charles Spurgeon
DR. CEREMONIAL has patented a lotion for producing regeneration in little children, by the application of a few drops to their forehead. He puts his hands on the heads of boys and girls, and by what he calls occult influence, confirms them in grace. He professes to be able to make a piece of a loaf and a cup of wine to be actually divine, and in themselves a channel of grace to the souls of men. The substances are material—a mouse may nibble at the one, a bottle will hold the other; you can touch them, taste them, smell them, and yet fools adore them as divine, and imagine that material substances can be food for souls. Surely this Dr. Ceremonial flourishes all the more because of the monstrous absurdity of his teachings; his pills are huge, but men have wide swallows and can receive anything. Why, think for a minute, and then wonder for an hour: men are to be sanctified by gazing at genuflexions, millinery and candles! The east is said to be a more gracious quarter of the heavens than the west, and creeds repeated with the head in that direction possess a peculiar efficacy. It appears that in spiritual operation certain colors are peculiarly efficacious; prayers said or sung in white are far more prevalent than in black, and according to the age of the year and the condition of the moon, puce, violet, scarlet, and blue, are more acceptable to God. I have no patience with these things; it is hardly good enough sport for laughter; but so long as fools abound, knaves will flourish, and this Dr. Ceremonial will get men to spend their substance in abundance, and laugh in his sleeve to think that rational beings should be his silly dupes. I trust there are none such here. I hope none of you are so befooled. What can there be in crossings, bowings, and uttering over and over the same words? What is any worship unless the reason and heart enter into it? What can there be in one material substance to give it sanctity? Is it not as absurd as the fetishism of the Bushman, to believe that bricks and mortar, and slates and boarding, could make a holy place? That, indeed, any one place can be a jot holier than another; that any plot of ground can be holier than common ground; or that any man, because certain words have been said over his godless, graceless head, can be made a dispenser of the grace of God, and a pardoner of sins! We are not so befooled, but still this quack drives a good trade, and is held in very high repute.