A great Christian preacher has given an admirable illustration of one way in which we may examine ourselves in this matter.  He has grouped together a number of precepts from the writings of some of the great heathen moralists, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then has urged the question how far we who profess to be the disciples of a loftier faith are true even to these ancient heathen ideals.[38] Perhaps, however, this is not a method of self-examination which is open to us all.  But this, at least, we can do:  we can test ourselves by that moral law, which God gave to the Jews by Moses, and which Christ reinterpreted in the Sermon on the Mount.  “Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery”—­all these commandments in their literal meaning we must observe; yet this is not enough; “do not even the publicans the same?” and Christ’s demand is, “What do ye more than others?” The murderous thought, Christ says, that is murder; the lustful look, that is adultery.  “Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy:  but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.”  As we listen to words like these must not we also confess, “Either these sayings are not Christ’s, or we are not Christians”?

(2) Christ’s idea of righteousness is further defined by contrast with that of the Pharisees:  “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  What was the Pharisees’ idea of religion?  Let us take the words which Christ Himself put into the lips of a representative of his class:  “God, I thank Thee, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.  I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get.”  This is a full-length portrait of the finished Pharisee.  Religion to him was a round of prescribed ritual, a barren externalism, a subjection to the dominion of the letter, which never touched the heart, nor bowed the spirit down in penitence and humility before God.  The Pharisee’s whole concern was with externals; but Christ declared that he who is only right outwardly is not right at all.  There is no such thing, He said, as goodness which is not from within.  The alms-deeds, the prayer, the fasting of the Pharisee were all done before men, to be seen of them; and so long as that which men saw was right and seemly, he was satisfied.  But Christ went back behind the outward act to the heart.  A man is really, He said, what he is there.  You may hang grapes on a thorn-bush, that will not make it a vine; you may put a sheep’s fleece on a wolf’s back, but that will not change its wolfish heart.  And men are what they are within.  Just as to get good fruit you must first of all make the tree good, so to secure good deeds you must first make good men.  This was the truth which Pharisaism ignored; with what results all the world knows.