Ritualism, Vanity of – Charles Spurgeon

I AM sometimes up on the Alps amidst the glories of nature, with the glacier and snow-clad peak; I am in the open, and I breathe the fresh air that comes from the ancient hills, but you tell me that there I am on “unholy ground”! Stands there, hard by, a little place, painted in all gaudy colors, in honor of a woman—blessed among women, it is true. I step inside, look round, and behold, the place is full of dolls and toys! Am I to be told that this is God’s house inside, and that outside thereof is not God’s house? It seems monstrous! How can any rational man credit it? Look into a little shell, full of “holy water.” Go outside, and see the foaming waters sparkling in the cascade, or coming down from the clouds, and they say, “There is no holiness in that! It’s a wicked notion—wicked, I say—to think that your four walls make that place holy, and your incantations, and I know not what, consecrate it. But, where God is, outside there, with the storm and the thunder, the rain and wind, it is not holy. Oh, sirs, I think the outside is the holier of the two! For my part, I can worship best there, and love God, and think of him as being nearer to me there, than I can within. The superstitious notion which makes people think that if they go at particular times to these places, and go through certain actions, they have done service to God, leads them to forget, if not altogether to disclaim God at ordinary times, and in common circumstances. Their God is a local God, and his worship is local. So we see men, when they have gone through the ritual, go back to revel in their vanities, and to repeat their sins. A change of heart they do not care about: they were regenerated in baptism. To be taught the way of God more perfectly—what does that matter? Were they not confirmed? To live upon Christ and feed upon his flesh and blood in spirit and in truth—that is nothing. They have had the bread and wine at the communion: will not that suffice? The whole thing generates formalism, and eats out the soul of true piety.