things of
religion, till nothing short of a miracle will open his eyes. See him in
the ministry, for instance, sweating at his sermons and in his visiting,
till you would almost think that he is the minister of whom Paul
prophesied, who should spend and be spent for the salvation of men's
souls. But all the time, such is the hypocrisy that haunts the
ministerial calling, he is really and at bottom animated with ambition
for the praise of men only, and for the increase of his congregation. See
him, again, now assailing or now defending a church's secular privileges,
and he knowing no more, all the time, what a church has been set up for
on earth than the man in the moon. What a penalty his defence is and his
support to a church of Christ, and what an incubus his membership must
be! Or, see him, again, making long speeches and many prayers for the
extension of the kingdom of Christ, and all the time spending ten times
more on wine or whisky or tobacco, or on books or pictures or foreign
travel, than he gives to the cause of home or foreign missions. And so
on, all through our hypocritical and self-blinded life. Through such
stages, and to such a finish, does the formalist pass from his
thoughtless and neglected youth to his hardened, blinded, self-seeking
life, spent in the ostensible service of the church of Christ. If the
light that is in such men be darkness, how great is that darkness! We
may all well shudder as we hear our Lord saying to ministers and members
and church defenders and church supporters, like ourselves: 'Now ye say,
We see; therefore your sin remaineth.'

Now, the first step to the cure of all such hypocrisy, and to the
salvation of our souls, is to know that we are hypocrites, and to know
also what that is in which we are most hypocritical. Well, there are two
absolutely infallible tests of a true hypocrite,--tests warranted to
unmask, expose, and condemn the most finished, refined, and even
evangelical hypocrite in this house to-night, or in all the world. By
far and away the best and swiftest is prayer. True prayer, that is. For
here again our inexpugnable hypocrisy comes in and leads us down to
perdition even in our prayers. There is nothing our Lord more bitterly
and more contemptuously assails the Pharisees for than just the length,
the loudness, the number, and the publicity of their prayers. The truth
is, public prayer, for the most part, is no true prayer at all. It is at
best