must be broken in pieces at once.
4. The first god who is worshipped among us is one called self-righteousness. The Pharisees were the high priests of this god; they burnt incense every morning and every evening before him, but he has ten thousand times ten thousand worshippers still left. Among your respectable classes of society he is the received divinity. If a man is respectable, he thinks it all sufficient. Among your moralists, this is the great god before which they bow down and worship. No, among sinners themselves, men whose character is not moral, there is, nevertheless, found an altar to this god within their hearts. I have known a self-righteous drunkard, for he has declared that he did not swear; and I have known a self-righteous swearer, for he trusted he would be saved because he did not steal. Until we are brought to know our own lost and ruined condition, self-righteousness is the god before which everyone of us will prostrate ourselves. Oh, my dear friends, if we have worshipped God in this house today, let us go home determined to aim a blow, by the help of God, at self-righteousness; let us go home and prostrate ourselves before God, and cry —
Vile and full of sin I am.
“Lord, I confess before you, that I have no good works in which to trust, no self-righteousness on which I can rely. I cast my boastings away; I come to you as a poor, guilty, helpless sinner; ‘Lord, save me, or I perish.’ ” That is the way to dash down this god. Paul once worshipped this mighty one, and worshipped him so well, that, after the “most strictest sect of his religion, he lived a Pharisee.” There never was, in his opinion, so good a man as himself. He served this god with all his mind, and soul, and strength. But, one time, as he was going to Damascus to sacrifice to this god with the blood of believers in Christ, the Lord Jesus looked upon him from heaven, and said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul fell prostrate, and down went his self-righteousness too. Afterwards, you might hear him say, “God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.” May we all go home thus, and pull down our self-righteousness. Stop a moment, I am not quite sure that we can do this all at once. My self-righteousness I feel in my own heart, as something like those colossal statues of Egypt, and when I try to break it in pieces, I can only disfigure it; I manage to break a chip off here and a chip off there, but still there stands the statue, not in all its former symmetry, but still there. At any rate, if you and I cannot completely get rid of our self-righteousness, let us never lay down the axe and the hammer until we have destroyed it. Let us go home today and have another blow at this old foe; let us go home to have another dash at the colossal god, and let us take up the chisel and the hammer, and once more try to disfigure him. This is the proper result of the ministry of God’s Word, to destroy and cut in pieces, and utterly break down our self-righteousness.
5. There are other gods still worshipped in this world, to be execrated with unrelenting indignation. There is one which is certain to be broken, just as sure as a man becomes a Christian: I mean Bacchus , that jolly god whom so many adored in days of yore with mad revelry, and who is still worshipped by tens of thousands of Englishmen. Perhaps he is the great god of Britain. I am certain he has many temples, for there is scarcely a corner of any street in which we do not behold his image, or see his votaries pouring out libations before him. He is a god that is worshipped with reeling to and fro, and staggering. Men become drunk in his presence, and so do him homage. Now, you who are drunkards, if you become Christians, that will turn your cup bottom upwards once and for ever. There will be no more inebriation for you now. By the grace of God you will say, “Those who are drunk are drunk in the night, but let us who are of the day be sober. I renounce this practice of drunkenness, I can have nothing more to do with it.” Bless God there are many here present who have gone out of this hall to demolish this god. Oh! if it would be proper to relate the cases that have been told privately to us, we could tell you this very day, not of one, or two, or twenty but of hundreds, who, as we believe, once made their homes a hell, who treated their wives with brutality and their children with neglect; whose homes were empty, because every article they had was sold for accursed drink. They have heard the gospel not in word only, but also in power, and now their home is a paradise, their house is made glad with prayer, their children are brought up in the fear of the Lord. We have seen the wife’s tear of gladness when she said, “The Lord be blessed for ever, and blessed be the name of the gospel, for a wretched woman has been made happy, and she who was only a drudge and a slave to one who was like a fiend, has now become the companion of one whom she considers to be just a little lower than an angel.” Indeed, may this be the effect with some of you, for there are some such here today undoubtedly, who still worship this all degrading deity, the deity of drunkenness.
6. Let me tell you of another god, which is to be pulled down as certainly by any man who worships Jehovah properly, and that is the god of lust; oh! this world is not so good as it seems to be. You scarcely hear the minister in these days speak of fornicators, adulterers, and such like: but they are not all dead. There are such to be found, such in every congregation, I fear. Our streets have not yet become such as Chastity might pace at midnight, nor are the chief places of the earth become clean and purified. There is much hidden pollution to be dragged forth, and cast into Kishon. Even in high places, sin is tolerated; men are respectable who have sent their fellow creatures to hell, and are going there themselves; but once let grace come into the heart, and away with these: the most darling lust is given up, and what was thought to be the greatest pleasure, is now looked upon with abhorrence and detestation. If you, my hearer, live in lust, and yet make a profession of religion, away with your profession, for it is an awful lie. Away with that profession, for it is an empty vanity! away with it! It will only add to your destruction, and cannot save you from the dreadful doom of the man who goes on in his iniquity. It is a happy thing for a man when he goes from the house of God, with the resolve that lust shall be abandoned, and every sinful pleasure cast away.
7. There are, too, the gods of business, but I must not touch upon them, of course. The minister has nothing to do with business, or so he is told. Keep your counting house door bolted always, do not let the minister inside. But the minister knows why he is shut out. Is it not because there are secrets of your prison house which you do not wish to have revealed? There are things done which pass for honesty among tradesmen, that if put in the balance of the sanctuary are found very wanting. I wish that the result of our preaching upon our hearers should be such that their actions should be more upright and their conduct more Christ-like in their daily business. I have heard of a woman who once went to hear a minister, and when he called to see her on the Monday, he asked her what the text was. She replied, “It was a blessed sermon to me, sir, but I forget the text.” “Well, what was the subject, my good woman?” “Oh! I do not know; I forget now.” “Well,” he said, “it cannot have done you any good then.” “Yes it did,” she said, “for though I forgot the sermon, I did not forget to burn my bushel when I got home.” The fact was, she had a bushel that gave false measure to her customers, and although she forgot what the sermon was about, she did not forget to burn her false measure. If any of you are in business and have false measures, though you may forget what I say, do not forget to break your yard measure, and to have your weights set right, and to remodel your business, and “to do to others as you would have them do to you.” Break the gods of your business in pieces, if you have not followed with your whole heart the statutes of the God of Israel. If you cannot serve God in your daily business, then give such business up, or alter it so that you can.
8. Say now, who is there among us who has not some image to break? I have thought sometimes that I had broken all mine at one time, for I have had the will to do it; but lo! I have walked through the temple of my heart, and I have seen in some dark corner an idol still standing. Let it be cast down, I have said; and I have used the sledgehammer upon it. But when I thought I had cleared it all away, there was still one gigantic figure standing there; for you may be sure that there is one idol of which we can never thoroughly cleanse our hearts though we try and though by God’s strength we give him a blow every day. It is the god of pride. He changes his shape continually; sometimes he calls himself humility, and we begin to bow before him, until we find we are getting proud of
