For then, before the storm of some trying
temptation, away goes all the play-acting religion; and the man's
true self rises up from underneath into ugly life. Up rise,
perhaps, pride, and self-will, and passion; up rise, perhaps,
meanness and love of money; up rise, perhaps, cowardice and
falsehood; or up rises foul and gross sin, causing some horrible
scandal to religion, and to the name of Christ; while fools look on,
and, laughing an evil laugh, cry,--'These are your high professors.
These are your Pharisees, who were so much better than everybody
else. When they are really tried, it seems they behave no better
than we sinners.'
Oh, these are the things which make a clergyman's heart truly sad.
These are the things which make him long that all were over; that
Christ would shortly accomplish the number of his elect, and hasten
his kingdom, that we, with all those who are departed in the true
faith of his holy name, may rest in peace for ever from sin and
sinners.
Not that I mean that some of these very people, in spite of all
their inconsistency, will not be among that number. God forbid!
How do we know that? How do we know that they are one whit worse
than we should be in their place? How do we know, above all, that
to have been found out may not be the very best thing that has
happened to them since the day that they were born? How do we know
that it may not be God's gracious medicine to enable them to find
themselves out; to make them see themselves in their true colours;
to purge them of all their play-acting; and begin all over again,
crying to God, not with the lips only, but out of the depth of an
honest and a noble shame, as David did of old--Behold I was shapen
in wickedness, conceived in sin, and I have found it out at last.
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