It is a creature of many lives!',

Back to Man's religion & God's religion 8

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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.

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Back to Man's religion & God's religion 8