and excess.” There are many books which are excellently bound, but there is nothing within them; and there are many people who have a very good spiritual exterior, but there is nothing whatever in the heart. Do you not know some of them? Perhaps if you know yourself you may discover one. Do you not know some who are precisely religious, who would scarcely omit attending to a single means of grace, who practise the ritual in all its forms and all its ceremonies, who would not turn aside as much as a hair’s breadth from any outward command? Before the world they stand as eminently pious, because they are minutely attentive to the externals of the sanctuary; but yet they are careless about the inward matter. As long as they take the bread and wine they are not careful about whether they have eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of Christ; as long as they have been baptized with water they are not careful whether they have been buried with Christ in baptism to death. As long as they have been up to the house of God they are satisfied. It is nothing to them whether they have had communion with Christ, or not. No, they are perfectly content, as long as they have the shell, without looking for the kernel; the wheat may go where it pleases — the husk, and the chaff and the straw, are quite sufficient and enough for them. Some people I know of are like inns, which have an angel hanging outside for a sign, but they have a devil within for a landlord. There are many men of that kind; they take good care to have an excellent sign hanging out; they must be known by all men to be strictly religious; but within, which is the all important matter, they are full of wickedness. But I have sometimes heard people be mistaken in this matter. They say, “Ah! well, poor man, he is a sad drunkard, certainly, but he is a very good hearted man at bottom.” Now, as Rowland Hill used to say, that is a most astonishing thing for any man to say about another, that he was bad at top and good at bottom. When men take their fruit to market they cannot make their customers believe, if they see rotten apples at the top, that there are good ones at the bottom. A man’s outward conduct is generally a little better than his heart. Very few men sell better goods than they put in the window. Therefore, do not misunderstand me. When I say we must attend more to the inward than the outward, I would not have you leave the outward to itself. “Make clean the outside of the cup and platter” — make it as clean as you can, but take care also that the inward is made clean. Look to that first. Ask yourself such questions as these — “Have I been born again? Am I passed from darkness to light? Have I been brought out of the realms of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son? Do I live by private communion near to the side of Jesus? Can I say that my heart pants after the Lord, even as the hart does after the water brooks?” For if I cannot say this, whatever my outward life may be, I am self-deceived and deceive others, and the woe of the hypocrite falls upon me. I have made clean the outside of the cup and platter, but the inward part is very wicked. Does that strike home with any of you? Is this personal preaching? Then God be blessed for it. May the truth be the death of your delusions.
10. You may know a hypocrite by another sign. His religion depends upon the place, or upon the time of day. He rises at seven o’clock perhaps, and you will find him religious for a quarter of an hour; for he is, as the boy said, “saying his prayers to himself” in the first part of the morning. Well, then you find him pretty pious for another half hour, for there is family prayer; but when the business begins, and he is talking to his men, I will not guarantee that you will be able to admire him. If one of his employees has been doing something a little amiss, you will find him perhaps using angry and unworthy language. You will find him too, if he gets a customer whom he thinks to be rather green, not quite pious, for he will be taking him in. You will find, too, that if he sees a good chance at any hour of the day, he will be very ready to do something underhanded. He was a saint in the morning, for there was nothing to be lost by it; but he has a religion that is not too strict; business is business, he says, and he puts religion aside by stretching his conscience, which is made of very elastic material. Well, some time in the evening you will find him very pious again, unless he is out on a journey, where neither wife, nor family, nor church can see him, and you will find him at a theatre. He would not go if there was a chance of the minister hearing of it, for then he would be excommunicated, but he does not mind going when the eye of the church or any of his friends is not upon him. Fine clothes make fine gentlemen, and fine places make fine hypocrites; but the man who is true to his God and to his conscience, is a Christian all day, and all night long, and a Christian everywhere. “Though you were to fill my house full of silver and gold,” he says, “I would not do anything underhanded; though you should give me the stars and the countless wealth of empires, yet I would not do what would dishonour God, or disgrace my profession.” Put the true Christian where he might sin, and be praised for it, and he will not do it. He does not hate sin, for the sake of the company, but he hates it for its own sake. He says, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” You shall find him a fallible man, but not a false man, you shall find him full of infirmities, but not of intentional lust and of deliberate iniquity. As a Christian, you must follow Christ in the mire as well as in the meadows; you must walk with him in the rain as well as in the sunshine; you must go with him in the storm as well as in fair weather. He is no Christian who cannot walk with Christ, come rags, come poverty, come contumely or shame. He is the hypocrite who can walk with Christ in silver slippers, and leave him when it becomes necessary for him to go barefoot. The hypocrite’s religion is like a chameleon, it takes its colour from the light which falls upon it, but the Christian’s religion is always the same. Is this true then of any of us? Can we say we desire to be always the same? Or do we change with our company and with the times? If so, we are confessed hypocrites, and let us own up to it before God, and may God make us sincere.
11. There is another sign of the hypocrite, and now the lash will fall on my own back, and on most of us too. Hypocrites, and other people besides hypocrites, are generally severe with others, and very lenient with themselves. Have you ever heard a hypocrite describe himself? I describe him thus: — you are a mean, beggarly fellow. “No,” he says, “I am not; I am economical.” I say to him, “You are dishonest, you are a thief.” “No,” he says, “I am only cute and sharp for the times.” “Well, but,” I say to him, “you are proud and conceited.” “Oh!” he says, “I have only a proper and manly respect.” “Indeed, but you are a fawning, cringing fellow.” “No,” he says, “I am all things to all men.” Somehow or other he will make vice look like a virtue in himself, but he will deal by the reverse rule with others. Show him a Christian who is really humble, and he says, “I hate his fawning ways.” Tell him there is one who is very courageous for Christ; “Oh! he is impudent,” he says. Show him one who is generous, doing what he can for his Master’s service, spending, and being spent for him; “Rash and imprudent,” he says, “extravagant; the man does not know what he is doing.” You may point out a virtue, and the hypocrite shall at once say it is a vice. Have you ever seen a hypocrite turn doctor? He has a fine beam in his eye, large enough to shut out the light of heaven from his soul, but nevertheless he is a very skilful oculist. He waits upon some poor brother, whose eye is a little affected with a mote so tiny that the full blaze of the sun can scarcely reveal it. Look at our beam eyed friend, he puts on a knowing look, and cries, “Allow me to extract this mote for you?” “You hypocrite! first cast the beam out of your own eye, and then you shall see clearly to cast the mote out of your brother’s eye.” There are people of that sort who make virtues in others into vices, and vices in themselves they transform into virtues. Now, if you are a Christian, I will tell you what will be your spirit, it will be the very reverse; you will be always making excuses for others, but you will never be making excuses for yourself. The true Christian, if he sees himself sin, mourns over it, and makes much ado concerning it. He says to another, “Oh! I feel so sinful”; and the other one cries “I cannot really see it; I can see no sin in you; I could wish I were holy as you.” “No,” says the other, “but I am full of infirmity.” John Bunyan describes Mercy, and Christiana, and the children, after having been washed in the bath, and sealed with the seal, as coming up out of the water, and being all fair and lovely to look upon; and one began to say to the other, “You are fairer than I!” and “You are more comely than I!” said another. And then each began to bemoan their own spots, and to praise the beauty of the others. That is the spirit of a Christian; but the spirit of the hypocrite is the very reverse; he will judge, and condemn, and punish with lynch law every other man; and as for himself, he is exempt, he is a king,
