y with the temptation to pile up false
fire on the altar; to dilate, that is, both in their prayers and in their
sermons, upon certain topics in a style that is full of insincerity.
Ministers who have no real hold of divine things in themselves will yet
fill their pulpit hour with the most florid and affecting pictures of
sacred and even of evangelical things. This is what our shrewd and
satirical people mean when they say of us that So-and-so has a great
_sough_ of the gospel in his preaching, but the _sough_ only. (2)
Another kindred temptation to even the best and truest of ministers is to
make pulpit appeals about the evil of sin and the necessity of a holy
life that they themselves do not feel and do not attempt to live up to.
Butler has a terrible passage on the heart-hardening effects of making
pictures of virtue and never trying to put those pictures into practice.
And readers of Newman will remember his powerful application of this same
temptation to literary men in his fine sermon on Unreal Words. (3)
Another temptation is to affect an interest in our people and a sympathy
with them that we do not in reality feel. All human life is full of this
temptation to double-dealing and hypocrisy; but, then, it is large part
of a minister's office to feel with and for his people, and to give the
tenderest and the most sacred expression to that feeling. And, unless he
is a man of a scrupulously sincere, true, and tender heart, his daily
duties will soon develop him into a solemn hypocrite. And if he feels
only for his own people, and for them only when they become and as long
as they remain his own people, then his insincerity and imposture is only
the more abominable in the sight of God. (4) Archbishop Whately, with
that strong English common sense and that cultivated clear-headedness
that almost make him a writer of genius, points out a view of sincerity
that it behoves ministers especially to cultivate in themselves. He
tells us not only to act always according to our convictions, but also to
see that our convictions are true and unbiassed convictions. It is a
very superficial sincerity even when we actually believe what we profess
to believe. But that is a far deeper and a far nobler sincerity which
watches with a strict and severe jealousy over the formation of our
beliefs and convictions. Ministers must, first for themselves and then
for their people, live far deeper down than other men. They must be at
h