PIETY

Gardiner Spring:

By piety, we mean:

•  the religion of principle, in distinction from the religion of impulse;

• a spiritual religion, in distinction from a religion of forms;

• a religion of which the Spirit of God, and not the wisdom or the will of man, is the author;

• a self-denying and not a self-indulgent religion;

• a religion that has a heavenward tendency, and not an earthly tendency;

• a practical religion, in opposition to the abstractions of theory;

• a religion that is so full of Christ, that the crucified One is at the basis of its duties and hopes; its center, its living head, and its glory.