A feeble, lively, showy religious activity may spring from many causes.  There is much running around, much stirring about, much going here and there, in present-day church life, but sad to say, the spirit of genuine, heartfelt devotion is strangely lacking.

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Devotion is the particular frame of mind found in one entirely devoted to God.  It is the spirit of reverence, of awe, of godly fear.  Devotion dwells in the realm of quietness and is still before God.  It is serious, thoughtful, meditative.

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The very essence of prayer is the spirit of devotion.  Without devotion prayer is an empty form, a vain round of words.  Sad to say, much of this kind of prayer prevails, today, in the church.  This is a busy age, bustling and active, and this bustling spirit has invaded the church of God.  Its religious performances are many.  The church works at religion with the order, precision and force of real machinery.  But too often it works with the heartlessness of the machine.  There is much of the treadmill movement in our ceaseless round and routine of religious doings.  We pray without praying.  We sing without singing with the Spirit and the understanding.  We have music without the praise of God being in it, or near it.  We go to church by habit, and come home all too gladly when the benediction is pronounced.  We read our accustomed chapter in the Bible, and feel quite relieved when the task is done.  We say our prayers by rote, as a schoolboy recites his lesson, and are not sorry when the Amen is uttered.

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Religion has to do with everything but our hearts.  It engages our hands and feet, it takes hold of our voices, it lays its hands on our money, it affects even the postures of our bodies, but it does not take hold of our affections, our desires, our zeal, and make us serious, desperately in earnest, and cause us to be quiet and worshipful in the presence of God.  Social affinities attract us to the house of God, not the spirit of the occasion.  Church membership keeps us after a fashion decent in outward conduct and with some shadow of loyalty to our baptismal vows, but the heart is not in the thing.  It remains cold, formal, and unimpressed amid all this outward performance, while we give ourselves over to self-congratulation that we are doing wonderfully well religiously.

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Why all these sad defects in our piety?  Why this modern perversion of the true nature of the religion of Jesus Christ?  Why is the modern type of religion so much like a jewel-case with the precious jewels gone?

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The great lack of modern religion is the spirit of devotion.  We hear sermons in the same spirit with which we listen to a lecture or hear a speech.  We visit the house of God just as if it were a common place, on a level with the theater, the lecture-room or the forum.  We look upon the minister of God not as the divinely-called man of God, but merely as a sort of public speaker, on a plane with the politician, the lawyer, or the average speech maker, or the lecturer.  Oh, how the spirit of true and genuine devotion would radically change all this for the better!  We handle sacred things just as if they were the things of the world.

The great lack of modern religion is the spirit of devotion.