The Word Hypocrisy

William D. McCrackan

The advancing Christian Scientist may suffer temporarily from the self-accusation of hypocrisy unless the line of demarcation between the real and the unreal is kept sharply drawn. The apparent discrepancy between the absolute which dawns upon human apprehension and human life itself, between endeavor and fulfilment, may react upon the worker if the world's estimate of reality is once admitted.

Mortal mind attempts to maintain a double standard. It fosters a fictitious double-mindedness, and so incurs the reproof of James, who writes, "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." It would declare that good and evil are both of divine origin, hence true and real. Metaphysically considered, therefore, hypocrisy is the belief in the reality of both Mind and matter, Spirit and the flesh, Soul and material sense, Principle and corporeality, Life and death, Truth and error, Love and hate or fear. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 360 of Science and Health: "Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you try to have two models, then you practically have none." Whoever is earnestly striving to demonstrate the unreality of evil through the spiritual understanding of the reality of God, good, need not barb the arrow of condemnation by accepting the accusation of hypocrisy.

The world has a yardstick of its own wherewith to measure its belief of hypocrisy, but Christian Science, elucidating the Scriptures, digs much deeper into human consciousness, and lays bare fundamental hypocrisy as a false belief about reality. In the gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus warned his disciples against "the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." This leaven, we are told, the disciples understood to be the doctrine of these schools of thought, and in Luke's gospel Jesus further defined this leaven as "hypocrisy." The leaven or doctrine thus condemned, namely, the belief that good and evil are both true and real, was the one generally prevailing at that time, and is still prevailing today except in so far as it is being destroyed by Christian Science.

If the Christian Scientist is striving to lay bare and destroy this deep seated belief in his own habit of thought and in the thought of those who seek his help, he has no valid reason for self-condemnation, even though his achievements do not keep pace with his right desires. But if the scientific Christian who is fighting the world's battles ahead of the world can be induced to shrink before the finger of worldly scorn and call himself a hypocrite because his human practice falls short of his divine preaching, he will presently find himself among the camp followers in the rear of the army of spiritual warriors, instead of at the front.

The world greatly admires what it is pleased to call consistency toward its own doctrine of the reality of both good and evil, and is correspondingly quick to condemn those who reject that doctrine. Thus the worldling's argument may take the form of asserting: I at least am consistent; I do not claim to be perfect, and therefore I conform my ideals to my achievements. It is very easy to be consistent with mortal mind; all one has to do is to lower one's ideals and the work is done; self-justification is then invited to sit in the seat of righteousness, and the individual has thereby reached a dead level of mortal consistency, but has lost his hold on heaven. He may indeed win a convenient peace, but at the sacrifice of his understanding of Life, Truth, and Love.

Now it is interesting to note that Jesus reserved his terrible denunciations, not for the despised "publicans and the harlots," but for the respected and hypocritical "scribes and Pharisees." It was the latter, the teachers of a conventional double standard of reality, of an impossible double-mindedness, who called forth the thunders of his awful reproof, whereas he sat at meat with recognized sinners who were receptive to truth, and fed them with the bread of heaven. On page 304 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy thus describes the true leaven: "This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death."

William D. McCrackan.

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Among the Churches

December 2, 1916

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