tory
with this keen and piercing charity, the smaller and smaller space we
shall allow to pure hypocrisy of any kind. The hypocrites shall not
deceive us into thinking them saints; but neither shall they deceive us
into thinking them hypocrites. And an increasing number of cases will
crowd into our field of inquiry, cases in which there is really no
question of hypocrisy at all, cases in which people were so ingenuous
that they seemed absurd, and so absurd that they seemed disingenuous.

There is one striking instance of an unfair charge of hypocrisy. It is
always urged against the religious in the past, as a point of
inconsistency and duplicity, that they combined a profession of almost
crawling humility with a keen struggle for earthly success and
considerable triumph in attaining it. It is felt as a piece of humbug,
that a man should be very punctilious in calling himself a miserable
sinner, and also very punctilious in calling himself King of France.
But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between
the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there
is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The
truth is that there are no things for which men will make such
herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.
There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained
every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there
never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to
have it. The whole secret of the practical success of Christendom lies
in the Christian humility, however imperfectly fulfilled. For with the
removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly
released for incredible voyages. If we ask a sane man how much he
merits, his mind shrinks instinctively and instantaneously. It is
doubtful whether he merits six feet of earth. But if you ask him what
he can conquer--he can conquer the stars. Thus comes the thing called
Romance, a purely Christian product. A man cannot deserve adventures;
he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs. The mediaeval Europe which
asserted humility gained Romance; the civilization which gained Romance
has gained the habitable globe. How different the Pagan and Stoical
feeling was from this has been admirably expressed in a famous
quotation. Addison makes the great Stoic say--

"'Tis not in mortals to command success;
But we'll do more, Sem