better,' says
Bunyan, 'I fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times: to wit,
to go to church twice a day, and that, too, with the foremost. And there
should I sing and say as others did. Withal, I was so overrun with the
spirit of superstition that I adored, and that with great devotion, even
all things, both the high place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and
what else belonged to the church: counting all things holy that were
therein contained. But all this time I was not sensible of the danger
and evil of sin. I was kept from considering that sin would damn me,
what religion soever I followed, unless I was found in Christ. Nay, I
never thought of Christ, nor whether there was one or no.'

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. To the Hebrews, they were _faciales_, face-
men; _colorati_, dyed men, red men, birds of many colours. You may paint
a man, you may paint a rose, you may paint a fire burning, but you cannot
paint a soul, or the smell of a rose, or the heat of a fire. And it is
hard to counterfeit spiritual graces, such as love to Christ, sincere
intending of the glory of God, and such like spiritual things.' Yes,
indeed; it is hard to put on and to go through with a truly spiritual
grace even to the best and most spiritually-minded of men; and as for the
true hypocrite, he never honestly attempts it. If he ever did honestly
and resolutely attempt it, he would at