There is nothing against which our Lord warns us so terribly as against hypocrisy. The discernment of Frenchmen and Germans has detected, or fancies it has detected that Englishmen are specially liable to be hypocrites, to profess what they do not practise, to care for the outward appearance of morality and religion while they neglect their inward essence. Whether this be specially true of us or no, it behoves us to look to ourselves. In literature, in journalism, in the pulpits, in political life, there are so many “prophets,” so many professors, so many remedy-mongers. They speak fair words, and brilliant success often seems to attend them. “Have we not prophesied in Thy name,” they cry, “and in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful works?” But not all the fair-seeming words, not all the brilliant, even miraculous successes, can compensate for the absence of personal character. That is the one thing to which our Lord looks. He warns us that not the most brilliant results can avail anything if we lack that inner character which is like Christ’s. This is a tremendous warning for days of wide and somewhat vague philanthropy, of restless activity, of nervous anxiety for successes and results, for days such as our own day. It is a tremendous warning for days of journalism, when every one is tempted to advertise himself or allow himself to be advertised, when everything is dragged prematurely into publicity, and even those who are working for Christ are apt to be morbidly anxious to produce results which can be tabulated in parish magazines or even proclaimed in newspapers. We need to remember that all these results in Christ’s eyes will not bear looking at, except so far as they are the product of inward Christian character, a character which He can recognize as His own. For He cannot accept anything, whatever its orthodox profession, in which He does not trace the lineaments of His own character. There are two other points which may be overlooked in this paragraph but which are of great importance. First, our Lord does encourage us or even command us to believe that wherever there is the good character, the Christlike character, there the Holy Spirit is at work. God works far beyond His own appointed channels. The principle of loyalty and obedience binds us who know His will to use His sacraments, His instituted ordinances; but God is not tied to His own ordinances. He can work wherever He sees the good disposition; and it is blasphemy against His Spirit to deny that He is at work anywhere where we witness the forming of the Christian character. The good fruit cannot come from anything else than the good tree.