Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/182

 the good of the whole human race as its chief or only end. But when a principle of selfish and worldly love is the source of all our external devotions, the religion in this case is polluted, and the worship is corrupt. All the doctrines which this Babylonish principle draws around it are false and deceptive! they contribute nothing to the purification of the heart—nothing to the formation of the heaven within—nothing to the peace, the tranquillity, and salvation of the soul. These false doctrines and persuasions, by which the evil is surrounded, and in the midst of which it lulls itself into the false hope of eternal security, are called the rocks, or the strongholds of Babylon, from which this destroying mountain of self-love and unholy dominion, will, by the mighty hand or power of Jehovah, be hurled down from its standing, and devoted to its own destruction—it will become a burnt or a burning mountain; by which we learn that the unhallowed fire of its own depraved lusts will burn up and destroy all its imaginary grandeur, and leave it to its own ruinous desolation. The advocates of a mere external and ceremonious religion, whose pomp may dazzle, and frighten the uninformed into a belief of her dogmas, while nothing but self-love is the very origin of its being, may lament over her, and say, "Alas! alas! that great city Babylon! for in one hour is her judgment come!" yet how different is the language of those in whom the heavenly state is formed as a living principle in the soul—"Rejoice over her thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets: for God hath avenged you on her." She destroyed all the earth; that is, the true spiritual church of God in the mind, and spread barrenness and desola-