Spurgeon: religious luxury

Sunday, January 31, 2016
    Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888
Meditation:
    Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
    —James 5:1-5 (ESV)
Quotation:
    O brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardour for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.
    ... Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons, Passmore & Alabaster, 1856, p. 83-84 (see the book)
    See also Jas. 5:1-5; Mark 4:13-20; 12:38-40; John 14:6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I confess that I have looked after myself first and ignored the needs of my brother. I pray that You work in me to cure this sickness of my soul. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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