+II. Dependence on external rites is an open rejection of Christ.+--"Christ shall profit you nothing; . . . is become of no effect unto you; ye are fallen from grace" (vers. 2, 4). Here the result of a defection from the Gospel is placed in the most alarming aspect and should give pause to the wildest fanatic. It is the forfeiture of all Christian privileges, it is a complete rejection of Christ, it is a loss of all the blessings won by faith, it is a fall into the gulf of despair and ruin. It cannot be too plainly understood, nor too frequently iterated, that excessive devotion to external rites means the decline and extinction of true religion. Ritualism supplants Jesus Christ. "It is evident that the disciples of the Church of Rome wish to lead us from confession and absolution to the doctrine of transubstantiation, thence to the worship of images, and thence to all the abuses which at the end of the fifteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth excited the anger and scorn of Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius, and others. The primary faith of the Reformers is in the words of Christ. The primary faith of the ritualists is in Aristotle. If the British nation is wise, it will not allow the Roman Church with its infallible head, or the ritualists with their mimic ornaments, or those who are deaf to the teachings of Socrates and Cicero, of Bacon and Newton, to deprive them of the inestimable blessings of the Gospel." +III. Christianity as a spiritual force is superior to external rites.+--1. _It bases the hope of righteousness on faith._ "For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith" (ver. 5). Look on this picture and on that. Yonder are the Galatians, all in tumult about the legalistic proposals, debating which of the Hebrew feasts they shall celebrate and with what rites, absorbed in the details of Mosaic ceremony, all but persuaded to be circumcised and to settle their scruples out of hand by a blind submission to the law. And here on the other side is Paul with the Church of the Spirit, walking in the righteousness of faith and the communion of the Holy Spirit, joyfully awaiting the Saviour's final coming and the hope that is laid up in heaven. How vexed, how burdened, how narrow and puerile is the one condition; how large, lofty, and secure the other! Faith has its great ventures; it has also its seasons of endurance, its moods of quiet expectancy, its unweariable patience. It can wait as well as work (_Findlay_).