The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon
these beneath your feet, and want no higher degree than that of a sinner saved by grace, and no greater honour than to sit at the feet of Jesus and to learn from him? Are you willing to be the despised followers of the carpenter’s son, as were the fishermen upon the lake? If so, I think, you have very little hypocrisy in you; but if you only follow him because you are honoured by men, farewell to the sincerity of your religion; you are unmasked, and stand before the face of this congregation an acknowledged hypocrite.
8. There was another evidence of a hypocrite which was equally good, namely, that he strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel. Hypocrites in these days do not find fault with us for eating with unwashed hands, but they still focus upon some ceremonial omission. Sabbatarianism has furnished hypocrisy with an extremely convenient refuge. Acts of necessity done by the Christian, are the objects of the sanctimonious horror of Pharisees, and labours of mercy and smiles of joy, are damning sins in the esteem of hypocrites, if done upon a Sabbath. Though our Father worked so far, and Christ worked, and though works of kindness, and mercy, and charity, are the duty of the Sabbath: yet if the Christian is employed in these, he is thought to be offending against God’s holy law. The slightest infringement of what is a ceremonial observance becomes a great sin in the eye of the hypocrite. But he, poor man, who will find fault with you for some little thing in this respect, straining at a gnat, is the man you will find cheating, adulterating his goods, lying, bragging, and grinding the poor. I have always noticed that those very particular souls who look out for little things, who are always searching out little points of difference, are just the men who omit the weightier matters of the law, and while they are so particular about the tithe of mint, and annas, and cummin; whole loads of tithe wheat are smuggled into their own barns. Always suspect yourself when you are more careful about little things than about great things. If you find it hurts your conscience more to be absent from the communion than to cheat a widow, rest quite assured that you are wrong. The Thug, {a} you know, thinks it is a very proper thing to murder all he can; but if a little of the blood of his victims should stain his lips, then he goes off to the priest, and he says he has committed a great sin; the blood has been on his lips — what must he do to get the sin forgiven? And there are many people of the same class in England. If they should do anything on a Good Friday, or on Christmas Day, poor souls, it is awfully wicked; but if they should be lazy all the six days of the week, it is no sin at all. Rest assured, that the man who strains at a gnat yet swallows the camel, is a deceiver. Note, my dear friends, I like when you strain at the gnats; I have no objection to that at all — only do not swallow the camel afterwards. Be as particular as you like about right and wrong. If you think a thing is a little wrong, it is wrong to you. “Whatever is not of faith is sin.” If you cannot do it, believing yourself to be right in not doing it, though another man could do it and do right, yet to you it would not be right. Strain the gnats; they are not good things in your wines, strain them out; it is well to get rid of them; but then do not open your mouth and swallow a camel afterwards, for if you do that, you will give no evidence that you are a child of God, but prove that you are a damnable hypocrite.
9. But read on in this chapter, and you will find that these people neglected all the inward part of religion, and only observed the outward. As our Saviour said, they “made clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they were full of extortion and excess.” There are many books which are excellently bound, but there is nothing within them; and there are many people who have a very good spiritual exterior, but there is nothing whatever in the heart. Do you not know some of them? Perhaps if you know yourself you may discover one. Do you not know some who are precisely religious, who would scarcely omit attending to a single means of grace, who practise the ritual in all its forms and all its ceremonies, who would not turn aside as much as a hair’s breadth from any outward command? Before the world they stand as eminently pious, because they are minutely attentive to the externals of the sanctuary; but yet they are careless about the inward matter. As long as they take the bread and wine they are not careful about whether they have eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of Christ; as long as they have been baptized with water they are not careful whether they have been buried with Christ in baptism to death. As long as they have been up to the house of God they are satisfied. It is nothing to them whether they have had communion with Christ, or not. No, they are perfectly content, as long as they have the shell, without looking for the kernel; the wheat may go where it pleases — the husk, and the chaff and the straw, are quite sufficient and enough for them. Some people I know of are like inns, which have an angel hanging outside for a sign, but they have a devil within for a landlord. There are many men of that kind; they take good care to have an excellent sign hanging out; they must be known by all men to be strictly religious; but within, which is the all important matter, they are full of wickedness. But I have sometimes heard people be mistaken in this matter. They say, “Ah! well, poor man, he is a sad drunkard, certainly, but he is a very good hearted man at bottom.” Now, as Rowland Hill used to say, that is a most astonishing thing for any man to say about another, that he was bad at top and good at bottom. When men take their fruit to market they cannot make their customers believe, if they see rotten apples at the top, that there are good ones at the bottom. A man’s outward conduct is generally a little better than his heart. Very few men sell better goods than they put in the window. Therefore, do not misunderstand me. When I say we must attend more to the inward than the outward, I would not have you leave the outward to itself. “Make clean the outside of the cup and platter” — make it as clean as you can, but take care also that the inward is made clean. Look to that first. Ask yourself such questions as these — “Have I been born again? Am I passed from darkness to light? Have I been brought out of the realms of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son? Do I live by private communion near to the side of Jesus? Can I say that my heart pants after the Lord, even as the hart does after the water brooks?” For if I cannot say this, whatever my outward life may be, I am self-deceived and deceive others, and the woe of the hypocrite falls upon me. I have made clean the outside of the cup and platter, but the inward part is very wicked. Does that strike home with any of you? Is this personal preaching? Then God be blessed for it. May the truth be the death of your delusions.
10. You may know a hypocrite by another sign. His religion depends upon the place, or upon the time of day. He rises at seven o’clock perhaps, and you will find him religious for a quarter of an hour; for he is, as the boy said, “saying his prayers to himself” in the first part of the morning. Well, then you find him pretty pious for another half hour, for there is family prayer; but when the business begins, and he is talking to his men, I will not guarantee that you will be able to admire him. If one of his employees has been doing something a little amiss, you will find him perhaps using angry and unworthy language. You will find him too, if he gets a customer whom he thinks to be rather green, not quite pious, for he will be taking him in. You will find, too, that if he sees a good chance at any hour of the day, he will be very ready to do something underhanded. He was a saint in the morning, for there was nothing to be lost by it; but he has a religion that is not too strict; business is business, he says, and he puts religion aside by stretching his conscience, which is made of very elastic material. Well, some time in the evening you will find him very pious again, unless he is out on a journey, where neither wife, nor family, nor church can see him, and you will find him at a theatre. He would not go if there was a chance of the minister hearing of it, for then he would be excommunicated, but he does not mind going when the eye of the church or any of his friends is not upon him. Fine clothes make fine gentlemen, and fine places make fine hypocrites; but the man who is true to his God and to his conscience, is a Christian all day, and all night long, and a Christian everywhere. “Though you were to fill my house full of silver and gold,” he says, “I would not do anything underhanded; though you should give me the stars and the countless wealth of empires, yet I would not do what would dishonour God, or disgrace my profession.” Put the true Christian where he might sin, and be praised for it, and he will not do it. He does not hate sin, for the sake of the company, but he hates it for its own sake. He says, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” You shall find him a fallible man, but not a false man, you shall find him full of infirmities, but not of intentional lust and of deliberate iniquity. As a Christian, you must follow Christ in the mire as well as in the meadows; you must walk with him in the rain as well as in the sunshine; you must go with him in the storm as well as in fair weather. He is no Christian