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The great fact which our Lord designs to illustrate is this — that numbers embrace the gospel from reasons that are not conclusive, and when stronger reasons, as they appear to them, arise in their intercourse with social life, they lightly renounce a creed they lightly adopted.

I. First, there are THOSE WHO ACCEPT RELIGION MERELY FROM IMPULSE, They are constitutionally the creatures of impulse. One man is the creature of feeling; another is more the creature of intellectual conviction; another is more borne away or decided in his course by fact. The Scotchman must have strong arguments; the Irishman must have eloquent appeals; and the Englishman must have hard matter of fact. Each nation has its idiosyncracy; each individual his peculiar temperament. Men who are the creatures of strong and impetuous emotion, subscribe to a creed, if I may use the expression, on the spur of the moment, and because they feel profoundly, they think they are convinced, and that the creed which they adopt is demonstrable and necessarily true. Now, I answer — this will not be sufficient to keep you steadfast. This is commencing the "tower," before you have laid a fit foundation; this is plunging into a conflict whilst you have not the weapons that will enable you to conquer. Feeling in religion is right; but feeling must not be all. An eloquent appeal may move you, but it ought not to decide you.

II. In the second place, there is THE RELIGION OF THE CROWD. Many men are religious in a crowd, who are most irreligious when alone. They like what seems to be popular; they can be Christians in the mass, but not Christians when insulated from others. Many a soldier is a coward when alone, but he becomes a hero in his rank and place in the battalion.

III. There is a third sort of religion — THE RELIGION OF MERE CIRCUMSTANCE. People often accept the religion of those they love, and with whom they associate.

IV. There are others whose religion is simply the religion of tradition. An outside robe; not the inner life.

V. There is another religion which may be called, THE RELIGION OF SENTIMENT. This religion is nourished by all the beautiful and the romantic. It is the religion of Athens rather than the religion of Jerusalem —the religion of painters and of poets, rather than the religion of thinking and intellectual minds.

VI. There is another religion which is equally false; and that is THE RELIGION OF MERE FORM. It regards the outer aspect of things; not the inner light. This is not a religion that will stand.

VII. And in the next place let me add, there is THE RELIGION OF INTELLECT. If some profess Christianity from sentimental sympathy with its beautiful parts, and others profess Christianity from admiration of its ritual, or its form, there are others who profess Christianity from deep intellectual apprehension of it; and yet theirs is a religion that will not stand.

VIII. And, lastly, there is another religion which will still more surprise you when I say that it also may be a religion that will not stand — THE RELIGION OF CONSCIENCE. It is possible for conscience to be in religion, and yet your heart not to be the subject of living and experimental Christianity. You will go to the house of God because your conscience would torment you if you did not do so. But is this the beautiful, the blessed, the happy religion of Jesus? Such service is slavery; such duties drudgery; and such a religion is a ceaseless and perpetual penance, and not "righteousness and peace in the Holy Ghost."

(J. Cumming, D. D.)

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KJV: For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

WEB: For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn't first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it?