THIS is a command from God, my friends, which well worth a few minutes’ consideration this day;—well worth considering, because, though it was spoken eighteen hundred years ago, yet God has not changed since that time;—He is just as glorious as ever; and Christian men’s relation to God has not changed since that time; they still live, and move, and have their being in God; they are still His children—His beloved; Christ, who died for us, is still our King; God’s Spirit is still with us, God’s mercy still saves us: we owe God as much as any people ever did. If it was ever any one’s duty to shew forth God’s glory, surely it is our duty too. Worth considering, indeed, is this command, for though it is in the Bible, and has been there for eighteen hundred years, it is seldom read, seldomer understood, and still more seldom put into practice. Men eat and drink, and do all manner of things, with all their might and main; but how many of them do they do to the glory of God? No; this is the fault—the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean any longer, as it used, the service of God—the being like God, and shewing forth God’s glory. No; religion means, nowadays, the art of getting to heaven when we die, and saving our own miserable, worthless souls, and getting God’s wages without doing God’s work—as if that was godliness,—as if that was any thing but selfishness; as if selfishness was any the better for being everlasting selfishness! If selfishness is evil, my friends, the sooner we get rid of it the better, instead of mixing it up as we do with all our thoughts of heaven, and making our own enjoyment and our own safety the vile root of our hopes for all eternity. And therefore it is that people have forgotten what God’s glory is. They seem to think, that God’s highest glory is saving them from hell-fire. And they talk not of God and of the wondrous majesty of God, but only of the wonder of God’s having saved them—looking at themselves all the time, and not at God. We must get rid of this sort of religion, my friends, at all risks, in order to get rid of all sorts of irreligion, for one is the father of the other.