The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-14
HYPOCRISY.

Thorn iq much trutu IN the old story Ot the
DIR nixon or otherwise immoral clergyman who
~, intaincd that his eXhprtatious to the viz
tn,s which he did not practice were just as
n,oftable as those of his more righteous
brethren. He was like a tnger-post; he
sl owed the right way perfectly well, although
he did not go along it himself. His case was
doubtless an extreme case. and he must have
been an impudent, hardened fellow; but he
had got hold of a truth. 1t is no answer, rs
many people think it is to mans exhorta-
tions or arguments, or whatever he puts
forth to bid him look at home, or to charge
him with hypocrisy because his own conduct
is not always in exact conformity with his
own doctrine. Hypocrisy in the strict sense
conscious and deliberate pretense IN matters
of devotion and morality is, we suspect a
much rarer vice than people think. At
al events it is a charge which, as one easy to
bring and hard to disprove, odght not to be
brought against any man without very strong
grounds. Inconsistency, self-delusion. mere
irreeolution and weakness, the mere imper-
fection, in short, Of human nature, go long
way to account for great deal which is often
roughly set down as hypocrisy
The clergyman with whose story we started,
whatever else he was, was at all events not
hypocrite. His vices were known to himself
and to everybody else; they were openly
avowed; though he acknowledged the excel
practice of others, he made no pretense of
practising it himself. Self-delusion in such
= case is quite possible, but for hypocrisy
there is clearly no room. But suppose that,
instead of impudently avowing his vices, he
had simply practised them in secret. Sup
nose that il was suddenly found out that a
man who had always preached good morality,
and was supposed always to have practised it,
was really drunkard, an adulterer, a gam
bier or whatever the vice may be. We sup
pose that most people would cry out, What
hypocrite that man has been Yet the
chances are very strongly against his being
what they mean by a hypocrite What they
mean is that, without any real feeling
of virtue and piety, he pretended to
virtue and piety simply for the sake
Of the gain OF reputation which they
might bring him. One may doubt whether
this is necessarily the New Testament sense
of the word hypocrite; it is certainly not the
necessary explanation of such case as We
have supposed A hypocrite, in the original
sense of the word is an actor, and it is quite
possible that, ia its New Testament use, it
may often refer to conduct which may be
fairly spoken Of as acting, but which is GER
tainly not hypocrisy iii the vulgar sense. John
Wesley bade one of his preachers to preach
certain doctrine. The preacher had his
doubts and scruplea; he could not say that he
fully believed the doctrine. Preach it till
you do believe it, was Wesley answer We
may be sure that Wesley did not mean TO bid
any one TO act in q dishonest OF what is com
monty called hypocritical way. But he GER
tainly required his disciple to act in a highly
artificial way; he called upon him to act part,
to be in the strict sense a ND0l1ites. Wesley
no doubt looked on believing as wholly
moral and not at all as an intellectual process,
and he bade man to learn to believe rightly
by believing rightly, as he would have hidden
him to learn to act rightly by acting rightly.
Still he was bidding man to act as if he be-
heyed what as yet he did not believe-a pro-
cess which differs only in the motive from
the act of him who pretends belief
for the sake of gain or reputation. SO
in many other cases, men throw them
selves into artificial states of
mind, which are put ON as it were to order,
which often prove only temporary, but which
still are put on in good faith What we call
making the best of a bad bargain often takes
this form. A man finds himself i'll a set of
circumstances which are not of his own
choosing; he is forced to a line of conduct
which is distinctly against the grain. He is
called on to do something which up to that
time has been against his feelings, perhaps
against his conscience. In such case he
often tries to persuade himself that the un-
avoidable course is not only righteous, but
pleasant course. He makes an effort and
throws himself into the thing; his voice is
louder, his arm is more forward, than the
arms and the voices of those to whom the
course which to him is new is q matter of
long habit or of Outstanding conviction.
The zeal of new converts has good deal of
this element in it; they have consciously to
act part, while those who are before them
are acting naturally and unconsciously; they
therefore commonly overdo matters
Or man has to maintain po-
sition about which he has moral doubts.
In such a case it commonly happens that
ne will be more confident and more inclined
to talk big than the man who never had any
doubts at all. He is trying not only to per-
suade others, but to persuade himself at the
same time. When man changes his side in
politics or religion, we often hear of his loud
professions of unalterable faithfulness to the
old cause almost up to the moment of his
forsaking it for the new. A cry is generally
raised against him as if his professions were
simply hypocritical, as if he was simply try
ing to lay suspicion at rest after his own mind
is made up and while he is only waiting for a
convenient moment to carry out his plan of
desertion. And no doubt it often has been
so. But it certainly is not so as matter of
course. 1t is just as likely that he is on the
very edge of making up his mind, but that he
has not yet made it up. AS long as he has
not made it up, as long as he has any doubt,
as long as the old system has any chance at
all with him, he tries to satisfy himself even
more than to satisfy others by talking louder
than ever on its behalf.
In all these cases man is certainly acting