Sincerity is as noble a
virtue, and insincerity is as detestable a vice, in a doctor, or a
lawyer, or a schoolmaster, or a merchant,--almost, if not altogether, as
much so as in a minister. Your insincerity and hypocrisy in your daily
intercourse with your friends and neighbours is a miserable enough state
of mind, but at the root of all that there lies your radical insincerity
toward God and your own soul. In his _Christian Perfection_ William Law
introduces his readers to a character called Julius, who goes regularly
to prayers, and there confesses himself to be a miserable sinner who has
no health in him; and yet that same Julius cannot bear to be informed of
any imperfection or suspected to be wanting in any kind or degree of
virtue. Now, Law asks, can there be a stronger proof that Julius is
wanting in the sincerity of his devotions? Is it not as plain as
anything can be that that man's confessions of sin are only words of
course, a certain civility of sacred speech in which his heart has not a
single atom of share? Julius confesses himself to be in great weakness,
corruption, disorder, and infirmity, and yet he is mortally angry with
you if at any time you remotely and tenderly hint that he may be just a
shade wrong in his opinions, or one hair's-breadth off what is square and
correct in his actions.
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