after good, our sense of duty and honour, kindliness and charity, are not merely our own likings or fancies:  but the voice of God’s almighty and everlasting Spirit.  Good news, indeed!  For if God be for us who can be against us?  If God’s Spirit be with our spirits, they must surely be stronger than our selfish pleasure-loving flesh.  If God himself be labouring to make us good; if he be putting into our hearts good desires; surely he can enable us to bring those desires to good effect:  and all that is wanted of us, is to listen to God’s voice within, and do the right like men, whatever pain it may cost us, sure that we, by God’s help, shall win at last in the hardest battle of all battles, the victory over our own selves.

SERMON XXXVII.  HYPOCRISY

Matthew xvi. 3.  Oh ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

It will need, I think, some careful thought thoroughly to understand this text.  Our Lord in it calls the Pharisees and Sadducees hypocrites; because, though they could use their common sense and experience to judge of the weather they would not use them to judge of the signs of the times; of what was going to happen to the Jewish nation.

But how was their conduct hypocritical?  Stupid we might call it, or unreasonable:  but how hypocritical?  That, I think, we may see better, by considering what the word hypocrite means.

We mean now, generally, by a hypocrite, a man who pretends to be one thing, while he is another; who pretends to be pious and good, while he is leading a profligate life in secret; who pretends to believe certain doctrines, while at heart he disbelieves them; a man, in short, who is a scoundrel, and knows it; but who does not intend others to know it:  who deceives others, but does not deceive himself.

My friends, such a man is a hypocrite:  but there is another kind of hypocrite, and a more common one by far; and that is, the hypocrite who not only deceives others, but deceives himself likewise; the hypocrite who (as one of the wisest living men puts it) is astonished that you should think him hypocritical.

I do not say which of these two kinds is the worse.  My duty is to judge no man.  I only say that there are such people, and too many of them; that we ourselves are often in danger of becoming such hypocrites; and that this was the sort of people which the Pharisees for the most part were.  Hypocrites who had not only deceived others, but themselves also; who thought themselves perfectly right, honest, and pious; who were therefore astonished and indignant at Christ’s calling them hypocrites.

How did they get into this strange state of mind?  How may we get into it?

Consider first what a hypocrite means.  It means strictly neither more nor less than a play-actor; one who personates different characters on the stage.  That is the one original meaning of the word hypocrite.