Try to conceive what emotions would spring up in the breasts of the men to whom these words were first addressed--men who with most scrupulous care had fulfilled the requirements of a costly ceremonial worship, the respectable, the orthodox of their day. With what indignation they would rebuke the prophet, and how triumphantly they would remind him that all the sacrifices which they offered, and all the ceremonies they observed, were of Divine appointment! And, doubtless, to their rebuke they would add a protestation that they had had a sincere delight in the services, which, they would not doubt, had come up as a sweet-smelling savour before the Lord. Both these allegations they might have made with truth, but the prophet would have dismissed them as irrelevant. What he denounced was not sacrifices, but certain sacrifices offered by particular individuals whose wickedness disqualified them for taking part in Divine worship. "To what purpose is the multitude of _your_ sacrifices," &c. But why should the wickedness of the worshippers cause the rejection of the worship, seeing that _it_ is of Divine appointment? Because--1. _Sacrifices are in themselves worthless to God._ He does not need, nor is He enriched by our offerings (Ps. l. 7-13). 2. _Sacrifices were instituted merely to be expressions of and helps to human piety, and are worthless when there is no piety to be expressed or fostered by them._ Outward worship is to religion just what a bank-note is to commerce; it is valuable only in so far as it is really representative of something beyond itself. The worship which does not really represent penitence, faith, and love in the worshipper is a falsehood, and is necessarily repulsive to the God of truth, and to the offerer of it it is a deadly hurt. As the sunlight which develops life only hastens the putrefaction of the dead, so the very services which help to sanctify and ennoble the saintly may more completely disqualify the insincere for heaven. 3. _Piety towards God is proved, not by costly sacrifices and stately ceremonies, even though pungent emotions are experienced by those who offer and take part in them, but by its pervasive influence on the character and the life._ In family life love is proved by obedience; and to our Heavenly Father the protestations of reverence and love which are offered by men who live in disregard and defiance of His requirements are naturally and necessarily repulsive (1 Sam. xv. 22, 23). No elaborateness or costliness of ceremonial worship can atone for the absence of godliness in the lives of the worshippers; sacrifices are no equivalents for sanctification; and by the love of sin in the soul of the pretended worshipper even a divinely-appointed ritual is rendered abhorrent to God.