a Christian if he
is.' There may be as much formalism in protesting against forms as in
using them. Extremes meet; and an unspiritual Quaker, for instance, is
at bottom of the same way of thinking as an unspiritual Roman Catholic.
They agree in their belief that certain outward acts are essential to
worship, and even to religion. They only differ as to what these acts
are. The Judaiser who says, 'You must be circumcised,' and his
antagonist who says, 'You must be uncircumcised,' are really in the same
boat.

And this is especially needful to be kept in mind by those who, like the
most of us, hold fast by the free and spiritual conception of
Christianity. That freedom we may turn into a bondage, and that
spirituality into a form, if we confound it with the essentials of
Christianity, and deny the possibility of the life being developed
except in conjunction with it. My text has a double edge. Let us use it
against all this Judaising which is going on round about us, and against
all the tendency to it in our own hearts. The one edge smites the
former, the other edge the latter. Circumcision is nothing, as most of
us are forward to proclaim. But, also, remember, when we are tempted to
trust in our freedom, and to fancy that in itself it is good,
_uncircumcision is nothing_. You are no more a Christian for your
rejection of forms than another man is for his holding them. Your
negation no more unites you to Christ than does his affirmation. One
thing alone does that,--faith which worketh by love, against which sense
ever wars, both by tempting some of us to place religion in outward
acts and ceremonies, and by tempting others of us to place it in
rejecting the forms which our brethren abuse.

IV. When an indifferent thing is made into an essential, it ceases to be
indifferent, and must be fought against.

Paul proclaimed that circumcision and uncircumcision were alike
unavailing. A man might be a good Christian either way. They were not
unimportant in all respects, but in regard to being united to Christ, it
did not matter which side one took. And, in accordance with this noble
freedom, he for himself practised Jewish rites; and, when he thought it
might conciliate prejudice without betraying principle, had Timothy
circumcised. But when it came to be maintained as a principle that
Gentiles _must_ be circumcised, the time for conciliation was past. The
other side had made further concession impossible. The Apostle had no