'
A formalist is not yet a hypocrite exactly, but he is ready now and well
on the way at any moment to become a hypocrite. As soon now as some
temptation shall come to him to make appear another and a better man than
he really is: when in some way it becomes his advantage to seem to other
people to be a spiritual man: when he thinks he sees his way to some
profit or praise by saying things and doing things that are not true and
natural to him,--then he will pass on from being a bare and simple
formalist, and will henceforth become a hypocrite. He has never had any
real possession or experience of spiritual things amid all his formal
observances of religious duties, and he has little or no difficulty,
therefore, in adding another formality or two to his former life of
unreality. And thus the transition is easily made from a comparatively
innocent and unconscious formalist to a conscious and studied hypocrite.
'An hypocrite,' says Samuel Rutherford, 'is he who on the stage
represents a king when he is none, a beggar, an old man, a husband, when
he is really no such thing.
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