that is from the temptations and defeats of public prayer!  No; public prayer is no test whatever of a hypocrite.  A hypocrite revels in public prayer.  It is secret prayer that finds him out.  And even secret prayer will sometimes deceive us.  We are crushed down on our secret knees sometimes, by sheer shame and the strength of conscience.  Fear of exposure, fear of death and hell, will sometimes make us shut our door.  A flood of passing feeling will sometimes make us pray for a season in secret.  Job had all that before him when he said, ’Will the hypocrite delight himself in the Almighty? will he always call upon God?’ No, he will not.  And it is just here that the hypocrite and the true Christian best discover themselves both to God and to themselves.  The true Christian will, as Job again says, pray in secret till God slays him.  He will pray in his dreams; he will pray till death; he will pray after he is dead.  Are you in earnest, then, not to be any more a hypocrite and to know the infallible marks of such?  Ask the key of your closet door.  Ask the chair at your bedside.  Ask the watchman what you were doing and why your light was in so long.  Ask the birds of the air and the beasts of the field and the crows on the ploughed lands after your solitary walk.

Almost a better test of true and false religion than even secret prayer, but a test that is far more difficult to handle, is our opinion of ourselves.  In His last analysis of the truly justified man and the truly reprobate, our Lord made the deepest test to be their opinion of themselves.  ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not as this publican,’ said the hypocrite.  ‘God be merciful to me a sinner,’ said the true penitent.  And then this fine principle comes in here—­not only to speed the sure sanctification of a true Christian, but also, if he has skill and courage to use it, for his assurance and comfort,—­that the saintlier he becomes and the riper for glory, the more he will beat his breast over what yet abides within his breast.  Yes; a man’s secret opinion of himself is almost a better test of his true spiritual state than even secret prayer.  But, then, these two are not competing and exclusive tests; they always go together and are never found apart.  And at the mouth of these two witnesses every true hypocrite shall be condemned and every true Christian justified.

Dr. Pusey says somewhere that the perfect hypocrite is the man who has the truth of God in his mind, but is without the love of God in his heart.  ‘Truth without love,’ says that saintly scholar, ’makes a finished Pharisee.’  Now we Scottish and Free Church people believe we have the truth, if any people on the face of the earth have it; and if we have not love mixed with it, you see where and what we are.  We are called to display a banner because of the truth, but let love always be our flag-staff.  Let us be jealous for the truth, but let it be a godly, that is to say, a loving jealousy.  When we contend