Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/181

 to be infatuated with the world and its sensual pleasures; and instead of being guided by the truths of revelation, to be grossly deceived by the fallacies of the senses. We are informed that in the building of this Babylon, they had brick for stone, and slime for mortar; or, as the original reads—"they had brick for stone, and pitch for clay." Brick is a kind of artificial stone made by man, and is mentioned in Scripture to signify what is false and heretical in doctrine, and whence no true spiritual worship can ascend. Hence Jehovah speaks by the prophet and says, "I have spread out my hands all day to a rebellious people, who walketh in a way that is not good, after their own thoughts; a people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick." (Isa. lxv. 2, 3.) In building this Babylon, they had the false persuasions of the natural and carnal mind, instead of the stone, the tried stone—the everlasting rock of divine truth. To these bricks, or false persuasions, were added the fiery lusts and concupiscences of the sensual life, denoted by pitch, instead of that pliable principle of natural goodness of heart, signified by the clay, and by which Jehovah moulds the man into his own image, and likeness—they had pitch for clay.

Now, this principle of selfish and worldly love, whence all impure and corrupt worship must spring, when it assumes the highest place in the human mind, so as to form the supreme and most elevated affection of the soul, is the destroying mountain, against which the hand of Jehovah is constantly stretched out. Religion, to be pure, must have God for its author, and