It is a creature of many lives!

Back to Man's religion & God's religion

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Man is a strange compound. A sinner, and the worst of sinners—and yet a Pharisee! A wretch, and the vilest of wretches—and yet plumbing himself on his good works! Did not experience convince us to the contrary, we would scarcely believe that a monster like man—a creature, as someone has justly said, "half beast and half devil," should dream of pleasing God by his obedience, or of climbing up to heaven by a ladder of his own righteousness.

Pharisaism is firmly fixed in the human heart. Deep is the root, broad the stem, wide the branches, but poisonous the fruit, of this gigantic tree, planted by pride and unbelief in the soil of human nature. Self-righteousness is not peculiar to only certain individuals. It is interwoven with our very being. It is the only religion that human nature understands, relishes, or admires.

Again and again must the heart be ploughed up, and its corruptions laid bare, to keep down the growth of this Pharisaic spirit. It is a creature of many lives! It is not one blow, nor ten, nor a hundred that can kill it. 

Stunned it may be for a while, but it revives again and again! Pharisaism can live and thrive under any profession. Calvinism or Arminianism is the same to it. It is not the garb he wears, nor the mask he carries, that constitutes the man.