AN English writer thus discusses the virtue of doing one's duty as compared with mere talking about doing it. "If you want an example of those highest things which cannot be spoken but can be acted," he says, "you have it in duty. Act it first and then the words you use about it will have meaning. Leave it unacted and the words will avail nothing." Whoever would order his life according to the canons of righteousness will find food for thought in this cogent reasoning. How frequently do our deeds fail to agree with our words, especially in connection with Christian duty! And yet a fundamental teaching of Christ Jesus was that men should conform actions to words in order to escape the pit of hypocrisy—pretension to be what one is not. Deeds rather than words determine character. Words may sometimes seem to determine one's reputation; but his character is the result of his thoughts and acts. One may deceive others, but he cannot escape the results upon himself of wrongful thinking, false words, and evil doing; to be right, he must think right thoughts and conform his acts to his words.
Moreover, the quality of one's thought determines the weight of one's words. There is no mistaking the ring of assurance in the words spoken out of the fullness of deep conviction; but how empty do words become when spoken without the background of demonstrated proof, and unrelated to one's own experience! Christ Jesus, in the direct and stern language which characterized many of his teachings, warned his disciples against hypocrisy,—the type of mortal thought which would not conform its words to its deeds, but, wholly lacking in sincerity, would attempt to deceive as to its true character. He knew the evil of this position, and hesitated not to condemn it. The Apostle James drew a delightful picture of the blessings resulting from right thinking, free from the inconsistency of hypocrisy: "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."
Christians have no greater need than to exercise that consistency between word and act which precludes hypocrisy, for only thus is spiritual progress made. It may rightly be demanded of nations no less than of individuals that word and act conform; yet there are strange inconsistencies in the relations which the nations representing the so-called higher civilization have held with the peoples thought to be less advanced. When a group of citizens of a nation claiming to be Christian undertakes to carry to a distant people the teachings of Christ Jesus, while at the same time another group from the same nation is striving for profit to force upon that people the opium traffic, for example, the situation belongs in the category of inconsistencies which work evil. That this evil has lessened in recent years is cause for rejoicing; yet the healing is far from complete!
