The Religion of the Day.
In every age of Christianity, since it was first preached, there has been what may be called a religion of the world, which so far imitates the one true religion as to deceive the unstable and unwary. The world does not oppose religion as such.It has in all ages acknowledged, in one sense or other, the Gospel of Christ, fastened on one or other of its characteristics, and professed to embody this in its practice; while, by neglecting the other parts of the holy doctrine, it has, in fact, distorted and corrupted even that portion of it which it has exclusively put forward, and so has contrived to explain away the whole.
I. What is the world's religion now? It has taken the brighter side of the Gospel, its tidings of comfort, its precepts of love, all darker, deeper views of man's condition and prospects being comparatively forgotten. This is the religion natural to a civilised age, and well has Satan dressed and completed it into an image of the truth. As the reason is cultivated, the taste formed, the affections and sentiments refined, a general decency and grace will of course spread over the face of society, quite independently of the influence of revelation. Is it not the case that Satan has so composed and dressed out what is the mere natural produce of the human heart under certain circumstances as to serve his purposes as the counterfeit of the truth?
II. Nothing shows more strikingly the power of the world's religion than to consider the very different classes of men whom it influences. (1) Many religious men, rightly or not, have long been expecting a millennium of purity and peace for the Church. In the case of those who have expected this, it has become a temptation to take up and recognise the world's religion as I have delineated it. They have, more or less, identified their vision of Christ's kingdom with the elegance and refinement of mere human civilisation, and have hailed every evidence of improved decency, every wholesome civil regulation, every beneficent and enlightened act' of state policy, as signs of their coming Lord. They have sacrificed truth to expedience. (2) On the other hand, the form of doctrine which I have called the religion of the day is especially adapted to please men of sceptical minds. There is a dark side to religion, and these men cannot bear to think of it. They shrink from it as too terrible. The religion of the world is but a dream of religion, far inferior in worth to the well-grounded alarm of the superstitious, who are awakened and see their danger, though they do not attain so far in faith as to embrace the remedy of it.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. i., p. 309.
Reference: Hebrews 12:28; Hebrews 12:29. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1639.