upper
the mistress of the house told me how I had terrified God's people. This
was by my doctrine of self-love, self-righteousness, self-ends, and such
like. She restricted hypocrites to that sort that do all things to be
seen of men, and harped much on this--how can one be a hypocrite who
hates hypocrisy in other people? how can one be a hypocrite and not know
it? All this led me to see the need of such doctrine.' And if only to
show you that this is not the dismal doctrine of antediluvian
Presbyterians only, Canon Mozley says: 'The Pharisee did not know that he
was a Pharisee; if he had known it he would not have been a Pharisee. He
does not know that he is a hypocrite. The vulgar hypocrite knows that he
is a hypocrite because he deceives others, but the true Scripture
hypocrite deceives himself.' And the most subtle teacher of our century,
or of any century, has said: 'What is a hypocrite? We are apt to
understand by a hypocrite one who makes a profession of religion for
secret ends without practising what he professes; who is malevolent,
covetous, or profligate, while he assumes an outward sanctity in his
words and conduct, and who does so deliberately, deceiving others, and
not at all self-deceived. But this is not what our Saviour seems to have
meant by a hypocrite; nor were the Pharisees such. The Pharisees
deceived themselves as well as others. Indeed, it is not in human nature
to deceive others for any long time without in a measure deceiving
ourselves also. When they began, each in his turn, to deceive the
people, they were not at the moment self-deceived. But by degrees they
forgot that outward ceremonies avail nothing without inward purity. They
did not know themselves, and they unawares deceived themselves as well as
the people.' What a terrible light, as of the last day itself, does all
that cast upon the formalisms and the hypocrisies of which our own
religious life is full! And what a terrible light it casts on those
miserable men who are complete and finished in their self-deception! For
the complete and finished hypocrite is not he who thinks that he is
better than all other men; that is hopeless enough; but the paragon of
hypocrisy is he who does not know that he is worse than all other men.
And in his stone-blindness to himself, and consequently to all reality
and inwardness and spirituality in religion, you see him intensely
interested in, and day and night occupied with, the outside