e Father of Lies is an honest man or woman. The gentle heart of Jesus
might bleed for you, but Eternal Justice would respect you and give you
your due. Once more, speaking not only as a priest of God, but as your
fellow man, let me as man implore you to be honest, and as priest, warn
you that the penalty of hypocrisy is eternal damnation. You have no
choice in the matter. One or the other you must be, and you cannot
possibly be both. Wherefore I tell you that whether you elect to be the
servant of God or the servant of Mammon, you must let all men know
plainly which you are. If you are reasonable beings you cannot believe
in yourselves or in each other, unless you do this. Remember that,
however fondly you may be deceiving yourselves, you cannot blind the
eyes of Omniscience. It is a hard thing to say, and yet it is only the
plain truth given to us by the lips of Christ himself, that you cannot
believe in God unless you do the things which He says. Living your
present lives you do not do them, and therefore you are not only
infidels and atheists living without God, but you are worse--you are
hypocrites, and woe unto you!

"I tell you, speaking as solemnly as a priest of God can do in His house
and in His presence that I would rather see this and every church in
Christendom attended by a score of people--of real Christians whose
daily lives throughout the week were really guided and sanctified by
obedience to the teachings of the Master, than I would see them crowded
with throngs of men and women like you, whose acts from Monday morning
to Saturday night consistently belie every word that your lips utter
here in the house of God and in the presence of the Holy Trinity.

"No doubt, there is already anger against me in many of your hearts on
account of what I have believed it my duty to say to you. I would not
willingly incur the hatred of any man or woman, and yet I shall not
altogether regret that anger, because it will be proof that my words
have reached, not only your ears, but your hearts. I have spoken plainly
and without regard to the conventionalities either of the world or of
the pulpit, and I have done so because I believe that conventionality is
the foe of truth, and therefore the enemy of religion. This, remember,
is a subject of such awful solemnity, laden as it is with the eternal
fate of every human soul that is baptised into the Church of God, that I
have found it my duty to make it plain to you at any cost