CMP Review 2025-01-19
Charlotte Mason sheds unusual light on the topic of hypocrisy. In her 1898 meditation entitled “Simplicity,” she asserts that we now have a superficial view of this vice. “Our rude modern notion of hypocrisy makes it the sin most easily to be avoided,” she explains.
The hypocrite, in our view, is the man who makes believe in the eyes of others to be that what he is not; but our Lord flashes a searching light upon his friends and upon his enemies and shews in a way never to be forgotten that the leaven to beware of is the posing before the eyes of our own consciousness, making believe to ourselves to be that which we are not. The all-penetrating leaven is that which we call insincerity; insincerity as to what we are, what we think, what we purpose, which is, alas, “the natural fault and corruption of the nature of every man,” unless as he is illuminated by the Light of the world.
One of the places Christ speaks of this “all-penetrating leaven” is Luke 12:1. A few years after writing her “Simplicity” meditation, Miss Mason wrote a poem about this passage in Luke. Not surprisingly, it develops and extends the theme with piercing and poetic power. Do we think we are free from hypocrisy? Let’s read or hear Charlotte Mason’s penetrating poem and ask ourselves again. Find it here.
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