certainly not your pleasure that I should be false towards God, since you cannot endure any falsehood towards men." "No," said his father, "you are not to be false; well, pray away, for all I care; but only when we are alone, not when strangers are by, else we should become a laughing-stock." "Father, I could not be untrue to God for my own dear father's sake; should I for the sake of strangers? I am not ashamed of my God and Saviour before any man, neither before strangers nor before the king himself; and I will be faithful and true to my God. If it is not your pleasure to have this thing done when strangers are present, then do not call me to table." The father said, "Boy, where did you get your pluck?" "I love the Lord," the son answered, "who has redeemed me; I would go into death a thousand times for Him." "You are no hypocrite, my boy," said the father; "well, for all I care, you may be pious, if you only will not be a hypocrite." "'From that time the ice was broken; and I have myself seen it with my own eyes, how father and mother and son used to read together in the Bible, pray and sing together, and how the brothers and sisters one after the other turned to the Lord. Rarely have I known a house in which the Lord Jesus was so fearlessly acknowledged as in that house. And do you know what of this history I would like to inscribe in your hearts, yea, would like to burn into your hearts with letters of fire? It is this. Let your Christianity be no lip work; let your religion not consist in words; lip-work Christianity is hypocritical Christianity. True religion is a fact. The genuine believer is upright and makes no pretence, neither to God nor man. The heartfelt conviction--"Boy, you are no hypocrite"--ought to be forced upon the beholder by the walk and behaviour of every real believer; if that had been the case, the world would present a different aspect from what it offers now. But most people's Christianity is a fashion of speech; and so it is lying and hypocrisy; therefore it can at one and the same time, like Pilate, chastise and set free, pray and neglect prayer, confess and not confess, just as happens to be convenient in the circumstances. It is not required that you should preach to everybody you fall in with, as if it were your vocation to set up lights for everybody's guidance; much more would often be spoiled than mended in that way. But to be a Christian, to walk as a Christian, and thus to confess one's Christianity honestly in action, just because it is so and you are not going to be false either towards God or towards men; that is the way in which the hearts of the parents are turned to the children, and the hearts of the children turned to the parents.'" CHAPTER XVII.