The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 568

external decorations can enhance its true worth. It is the beauty of
holiness, a meek and quiet spirit, which is of value with God.
Brilliancy of style is not necessarily an index of pure, elevated
thought. High conceptions of art, delicate refinement of taste, often exist
in minds that are earthly and sensual. They are often employed by Satan
to lead men to forget the necessities of the soul, to lose sight of the future,
immortal life, to turn away from their infinite Helper, and to live for this
world alone.
A religion of externals is attractive to the unrenewed heart. The
pomp and ceremony of the Catholic worship has a seductive, bewitching
power, by which many are deceived; and they come to look upon
the Roman Church as the very gate of heaven. None but those who
have planted their feet firmly upon the foundation of truth, and whose
hearts are renewed by the Spirit of God, are proof against her influence.
Thousands who have not an experimental knowledge of Christ will be
led to accept the forms of godliness without the power. Such a religion
is just what the multitudes desire.
The church’s claim to the right to pardon leads the Romanist to feel at
liberty to sin; and the ordinance of confession, without which her pardon
is not granted, tends also to give license to evil. He who kneels before
fallen man, and opens in confession the secret thoughts and imaginations
of his heart, is debasing his manhood and degrading every noble instinct
of his soul. In unfolding the sins of his life to a priest,—an erring,
sinful mortal, and too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness,—his
standard of character is lowered, and he is defiled in consequence. His
thought of God is degraded to the likeness of fallen humanity, for the
priest stands as a representative of God. This degrading confession of
man to man is the secret spring from which has flowed much of the evil
that is defiling the world and fitting it for the final destruction. Yet to
him who loves self-indulgence,

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