ight die
quickly, that my soul might be gone to rest.'

Then Christian gave three leaps for joy and went on singing:

'Thus far did I come laden with my sin,
Nor could ought ease the grief that I was in
Till I came hither: . . .
Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me.'

FORMALIST AND HYPOCRISY

'A form of godliness.'--Paul.

We all began our religious life by being formalists. And we were not
altogether to blame for that. Our parents were first to blame for that,
and then our teachers, and then our ministers. They made us say our
psalm and our catechism to them, and if we only said our sacred lesson
without stumbling, we were straightway rewarded with their highest
praise. They seldom took the trouble to make us understand the things we
said to them. They were more than content with our correct repetition of
the words. We were never taught either to read or repeat with our eyes
on the object. And we had come to our manhood before we knew how to seek
for the visual image that lies at the root of all our words. And thus
the ill-taught schoolboy became in us the father of the confirmed
formalist. The mischief of this neglect still spreads through the whole
of our life, but it is absolutely disastrous in our religious life. Look
at the religious formalist at family worship with his household gathered
round him all in his own image. He would not on any account let his
family break up any night without the habitual duty. He has a severe
method in his religious duties that nothing is ever allowed to disarrange
or in any way to interfere with. As the hour strikes, the big Bible is
brought out. He opens where he left off last night, he reads the
regulation chapter, he leads the singing in the regulation psalm, and
then, as from a book, he repeats his regulation prayer. But he never
says a word to show that he either sees or feels what he reads, and his
household break up without an idea in their heads or an affection in
their hearts. He comes to church and goes through public worship in the
same wooden way, and he sits through the Lord's Table in the same formal
and ceremonious manner. He has eyes of glass and hands of wood, and a
heart without either blood or motion in it. His mind and his heart were
destroyed in his youth, and all his religion is a religion of rites and
ceremonies without sense or substance. 'Because I knew no