Outside us, I say, will be our religious life:
and inside us our own actual life, our own natural character, too
often very little changed or improved at all. So by continually
playing at religion, we shall deceive ourselves. We shall make an
entirely wrong estimate of the state of our souls. We shall fancy
that this outward religion of ours is the state of our soul. And
then, if any one tells us that we are play-acting, and hypocrites,
we shall be as astonished and indignant as the Pharisees were of
old. We shall make the same mistake as a man would, who because he
always wore clothes, should fancy at last that his clothes were
himself, part of his own body. So, I say, many deceive themselves,
and are more or less hypocrites to themselves. They do not, in
general, deceive others; they are not, on the whole, hypocrites to
their neighbours. For their neighbours, after a time, see what they
cannot see themselves, that they are play-acting; that they are two
different people without knowing it: that their religion is a thing
apart from their real character. A hundred signs shew that. How
many there are, for instance, who are, or seem tolerably earnest
about religion, and doing good, as long as they are actually in
church, or actually talking about religion.
Pages:
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325