1.  It is not merely opinion or intellectual belief in a creed.  This may be good, or even necessary, but it is not religion.  “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well:  the devils also believe and tremble.”  We speak with pride, sometimes, of our puissant Christendom, so industrious, so intelligent, so moral, with its ubiquitous commerce, its adorning arts, its halls of learning, its happy firesides, and its noble charities.  And yet what is our vaunted Christendom but a vast assemblage of believing but disobedient men?  Said William Law to John Wesley, “The head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of Jesus as with any other notion.”  The most sacred duty may degenerate into a dogma, asking only to be believed.  “I go, sir,” answered the son in the parable, “but went not.”

2.  It is not mere feeling.  It is neither hope of heaven’s joy, nor fear of hell’s misery.  It may rightly include these, but it is vastly more and higher.  It is neither ecstasy nor remorse.  The most resolutely impenitent sinner can shout “Hallelujah,” and “Woe is me,” as loudly as any saint.  Now feeling is of vast importance.  It stands close to the will and stimulates it, but it is not conformity.  The will must be aroused to a robust life.

3.  Christianity is these and a great deal more.  Mere belief would make religion a mere theology.  Mere emotion would make it mere excitement.  The true divine idea of it is a life; doing his will, not indolently sighing to do it, and then lamenting that we do it not; but the thing itself in actual achievement, from day to day, from month to month, from year to year.  Thus religion rises on us in its own imperial majesty.  It is no mere delight of the understanding in the doctrines of our faith; no mere excitement of the sensibilities, now harrowed by fear, and now jubilant in hope; but a warfare and a work, a warfare against sin, and a work with God.  Religion is not an entertainment, but a service.  We are to set before us the perfect standard, and then struggle to shape our lives to it.  Personal sanctity must be made a business of.[A]

  [Footnote A:  This page is mainly a series of quotations from Dr.
  R.D.  Hitchcock’s sermon on “Religion, the Doing of God’s Will.”]

A little more than thirty years ago a regiment was sent home from the Army of the Potomac to enforce the draft after the riots in this city.  Some of you may picture to yourselves a thousand men with silk banners and gold lace and bright uniforms, resplendent in the sunshine.  You could not make a worse mistake.