Romish Priestcraft Dishonoring to God – Charles Spurgeon

ALAS! alas! It makes a Christian’s blood boil to see glory given in a professed place of worship, ay, and in a professed Protestant church, too, to a pack of scamps who call themselves “priests”! I would not call them by such a name if they were honest enough to go off to the Church of Rome, where they ought to be; but having the impudent effrontery to attempt to palm themselves off in this country of ours for what they are not, I know of no words bad enough for them. What reverence or respect is to be paid to those gentry inside those brass gates, around the thing they call an altar? I suppose those gates enclose a sort of holy place, into which the poor laity must not go! If these priests had their way, we should have to go down and lick the soles of their feet, as our benighted forefathers aforetimes bowed before the hirelings of Rome. Does it not make a man feel, when you see pictures of his holiness and the cardinals, and so on, scattering their blessings at the Vatican, or at St. Peter’s, while admiring crowds fall down and worship them, that it were infinitely better to bow to the devil himself? We give glory unto God, but not a particle of glory to anything in the shape of a man, or an angel either. Have I not stood and seen the crowds by hundreds fall down and worship images and dressed-up dolls? I have seen them worship bones and old teeth; I have seen them worship a skeleton, dressed out in modern costume, said to be the skeleton of a saint; and I have marveled how we could, in this nineteenth century, find people so infatuated as to think that such idolatry was pleasing to the most high God. We, brethren, the people of God, who know Christ, can give no glory to this rubbish, but turn away from it with horror. Our glory must be given to Christ, and to Christ alone. Now, here is the touchstone to try your religion by. When you pray, to whom do you pray? Through whom do you pray? When you sing, for whom is the song meant? When you preach, to whose honor do you preach? To whom do you intend to do service? When you go out among the poor, when you distribute alms, when you scatter your tracts, when you talk about the gospel, for whom do you do this? For, as the Lord lives, if you do it for yourselves, or for any beside the Lord Jesus, you do not know what the vitality of godliness is, for Christ, and Christ only, must be the grand object of the Christian; the promotion of his glory must be that for which he is willing to live, and for which, if needs be, he would be prepared to die. Oh! down, down, down with everything else, but up, up, up with the cross of Christ! Down with your baptism, and your masses, and your sacraments! Down with your priestcraft, and your rituals, and your liturgies! Down with your fine music, and your pomp, and your robes, and your garments, and all your ceremonials. But up, up, up with the doctrine of the naked cross, and the expiring Savior. Let the voice ring throughout the whole world, “Look unto me and live!” There is life in a look at the crucified One. There is life in simple confidence in him, but there is life nowhere else. God send to his church an undying passion to promote the Savior’s glory, an invincible, unconquerable pang of desire, and longing that by any means King Jesus may have his own, and may reign throughout these realms! In this sense, then, Jesus is and must be the glory of his people.