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REALITY IN CHARACTER

Ye shall not be as the hypocrites.-Matt. 6:5.

"Y

E shall not be as the actors," as those who play a part. "For I say unto

you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." One leading feature in the righteousness thus reprobated was that it lacked genuineness. Christ came into the world to plead for reality-reality in character; and He was specially incensed against these obtrusive religionists, who were so signally wanting in truth. Just as an actor struts on the stage as though he were a king, boasting big words, decked with spangled purple, and crowned with the likeness of a kingly diadem, yet all the time is a mere plebeian, or perhaps a pauper; so the Pharisee played the rôle of a saint without a shred of genuine saintliness.

True righteousness is not a matter of ecclesiasticism, but of the hallowing of secular life. The Pharisee was so largely occupied with questions of transition, ceremonial, uniform, and festivals,

that he forgot the obligation of high living in practical, every-day life. Christ protested against this purely ecclesiastical piety. True righteousness cannot be circumscribed by the temple; it must radiate throughout the home and workshop, the street and market-place: veils and phylacteries are not its native attire, but garments unspotted from the world; and to it every day is sabbatic, every duty sacramental. The zeal of the Pharisee was misdirected; he put the emphasis in the wrong place. Christ pleaded for a heartfelt piety that would purify and beautify all life, as against a merely formal and unfruitful churchism. If we wish to be sure of the quality of our goodness, let us test it on the secular side of life, rather than by its professional and ecclesiastical implications. When we recall the reverential manner in which we handle the holy book, let us be sure of the integrity of our business-books; when we complacently reflect upon the orthodoxy of our creed, let us examine ourselves as to how far we keep faith with men; when we remember our devout behavior in God's house, let us give a thought about our conduct in our own; and when we flatteringly estimate ourselves in our Sunday clothes, let us inquire as to how our neighbors reckon us up in our shirt-sleeves. Genuine righteousness loves the habitation of God's house; but it demonstrates itself in all the walks of daily life by touching the things of

earth with the beauty of heaven. The piety that does not thus reveal itself is in the thought of our Lord theatrical.

True righteousness is not external and mechanical, but spiritual and free. A great writer has declared that there are times when society is all surface, having no depth of thought, strength of conviction, or spontaneity of action. This was largely true of the religious society of our Lord's time; it was shallow and formal. Jesus Christ said, "The kingdom of God is within you"; and He was deeply distressed by their mechanical worship, their professions which had no heart, their pretentious prayers, alms, and fasts that were simply routine. The righteousness of the Pharisee had no root in a sincere, convinced, and consecrated heart, and therefore in the sight of our Lord was without reality, and could bear no precious fruit. The quarrel of Jesus Christ with the moralists of to-day is much the same as it was with those of His own time. The dispute between the utilitarian moralist and Christ does not particularly concern the code of morality, the moot point being as to whether morality requires a spiritual root; and the contention between the ecclesiastical moralist and Christ does not so much effect the rule of duty as it turns upon the necessity of virtue possessing a spiritual essence. True religion is a question of insight, conviction, heart-throbs, inward purity,

and infinite aspiration. Art critics sometimes argue that our age has witnessed a serious deterioration in popular taste and in the love of the beautiful; and they impute this to the fact that nature and man are less at their ease than in the old days, being more constrained to act in the grooves of mechanical necessity, and consequently there are fewer beautiful objects, and the artistic sense is injured: so these critics warn us against the inroads of the power of mechanism, and urge us to resist the encroachments of the mechanical on our free life. But if the aggression of mechanism is to be feared in the artistic world, if it is starving the æsthetic faculty and impoverishing the world of music and beauty, is it not more threatening and fatal in the sphere of character? There is an ecclesiastical as well as a social mechanism of morals against which we must watch. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Whatever is not of the heart is of the theatre. The faith, love, and enthusiasm of the soul alone convert the forms of religion and the code of respectability into the holiness of truth.

True righteousness is divine. The righteousness of the Pharisee was self-fabricated, and worked out with strict regard to human appreciation and reward. God was not in all their thoughts. "That they may have glory of men"; "that they may be seen of men"; "that they

men.

may be seen of men to fast." Whatever in virtue is simply self-regarding and society-regarding lacks reality. It is always bad to "play to the gallery," but worst of all to observe the forms of righteousness to secure the applause of God is the substance of the splendid forms and colors of creation, and His love and fear alone make the reality of goodness. Whatever is not of God is of the stage. Ruskin insists that sculpture should never imitate the work of man, all such representation being illegitimate and ineffective; it must confine itself to the representation of the work of God-the flower of the grass, the leaf of the tree, the fruit of the garden, the human form divine. If, then, plastic art must occupy itself only with God's work, and if it becomes false and feeble when it forsakes such representation, how much more must it be so in the realm of morals! To attain reality and perfection morality must be full of the sense of God, must be an imitation of God, and be kindled and sustained by the breath of God. There is no true glory of character except as it finds its source, reason, ideal, life, and reward in the thought of the eternally righteous God.