Outward and Inward Religion

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Romans 2:25-29

For circumcision truly profits, if you keep the law: but if you be a breaker of the law, your circumcision is made uncircumcision.…

Would the washing of the windows of a house make the inhabitants thereof clean? Yea, does the painting and ornamenting of the exterior of a mansion make the dwellers in it healthier or holier men? We read of devils entering into a clean-swept and garnished house, and the last end of that man was worse than the first. All the outward cleansing is but the gilding of the bars of the cage full of unclean birds; the whitewashing of sepulchres full of rottenness and dead men's bones. Washing the outside of a box will leave all the clothes inside as foul as ever. Remember, therefore, that all that you can do in the way of outward religion is nothing but the sacrifice of the fat of rams, and "to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

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