serve to perpetuate this unscriptural distinction, and to drive men from a plain and important duty, they have a baleful effect.  They may be well intended.  Doubtless they are so by the generality of those who attend them.  It is painful to be obliged to dissent from men whom we receive as brethren, and revere as Christians.  But after much deliberation, such are our views of the subject before us; and we offer them to the serious consideration of the followers of Christ.

* * * * *

But these are well intended.  So probably was Uzzah’s steadying the ark—­But some of these do help on the cause of God, and even more than the stale attendance on Lord’s day duties.  So thought those who introduced images and paintings into churches. [Some indeed attend those who neglected Lord’s day duties.]

Have we then discovered defects in the divine plan!  And do we feel ourselves capable of making emendations in it!—­Of “teaching eternal wisdom how to rule!”—­How to effect its purposes of mercy!

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.  Vain man would be wise—­He naturally thinks himself qualified, even to ameliorate divine institutions.  Temptation to this sin coincides with a natural bias in depraved humanity.  Many and very mischievous errors have issued from it.  Would we escape the snare, we must listen to the apostle speaking in the text.  The sum of his advice is to keep to the divine directions, especially in matters of religion.  These are contained and plainly taught in the holy Scriptures, which we have in our hands, and of the sense of which we must judge for ourselves; remembering that we are accountable to God the judge of all.

As some are spoiled through philosophy and vain deceit, others are corrupted by regard to the tradition of men and rudiments of the world.  This endangered the Colossians, and eventually ruined the church at Rome.  The leading errors of paganism were thereby introduced into that Christian church, and rendered it completely antichristian.  Errors which seemed to have been destroyed by Christianity, were again revived, and the abominations which they had occasioned, were acted over again with enlargements!

The traditions of men and rudiments of the world, have still their seducing influence.  Most men swim down with the current of the times —­adopt the sentiments and conform to the usages of those with whom they live.  The popular scheme of religion, they consider as the orthodox scheme, and the religion of the land, the true religion.  Therefore is one nation Papists, another Protestants, one Calvinists, another Lutherans.  These differences of sentiment do not arise from differences in the mental constitutions of nations, but from the accidental differences of situation.