The Danger of Seeming To Be Better than you Are.
By Rev. W. H. H. Murray
Now, I think, if we closely observe ourselves, the best of us will find a tendency in us to lapse into a lethargic state, into an amiable routine of pious appearances. The frankness and candor in confession of sin and of unsatisfactory spiritual condition, which, if practiced, would go far to prevent it altogether, are very seldom seen or heard. There is a certain pressure in religious circles to make everybody feel that he must call himself a saint or lose caste. Even young converts, before examining committees, labor under the impression that they are to answer, “Yes,” to every question touching spiritual development, no matter how unreasonable is the supposition upon which it is based. I have heard questions propounded to converts of four weeks’ standing, to which few professors of ten years’ experience could affirmatively respond; and yet, under the pressure of this same sentiment, promptly answered. A word or two upon this point. Now, there are some experiences which come to one at conversion, and others come only through the process of sanctification; and no pastor or committee has a right to put a question which shall force the candidate, in order to avoid embarrassment, to declare that a “grain of mustard-seed, which is the smallest of all seeds,” is a mighty tree, so strong, so vast, so perfectly developed, that the birds of heaven come and make it their home. If there is one thing which we need to guard our young people against, it is a false standard of spiritual development, and the exaggeration of personal attainments in piety. I have no sympathy with a forcing process in reference to young professors any more than in reference to young horses. A man may assert before a committee that he feels so and so, has such and such views, which views and feelings can only come through a long lapse of years in Christian failure and victory; and all the while he is exaggerating his spiritual attainment. There are feelings and experiences which a young girl of seventeen can have; and there are others which none but the mothers in Israel, who have lived and suffered many weary years, can have; and this should be well understood. It is unseemly for the rough and unfinished block, but just lifted from the quarry-pit, to compare itself with the statue which the patient chiseling of many months has dressed into perfect symmetry; and we all know how rough the nature of man is at the first, and how slowly it grows into the “perfect stature of Christ” under the gracious application of God’s grace. The age in which we live is a marked one, in reference to what it professes. What it needs is a demonstration that its virtue is equal to its profession. No one has a right to seem to be better than he is. To assume, by tone or looks, in prayer or exhortation, an anxiety for souls which you do not feel, a piety which you do not at heart have, is worse than bearing false witness against your neighbor; it is bearing false witness against your own soul and against Christ himself. I search in vain for words with which to lift and swing the weight of my detestation, and bring it down upon the head of cant and pious seeming. What we need at this time in the church is a broad-chested, open-handed, frank-faced piety, unassuming and honest, ready to confess its failings and to remedy them. And the best rule that all of us, young or old, can adopt is this: “I will be as good as I seem, and I will seem to be no better than I am.” Such a sentiment, lived up to, would carry us higher up the plane of Godlikeness than one might at first think.—Rev. W. H. H. Murray.