Faber Self-Deceit-A Comedy on Lies

PENDLE HILL PAMPHLET 50

Self-DeceitA Comedy On Lies;

A Way Of Overcoming Them

Frederick Faber

PENDLE HILL PUBLICATIONSWALLINGFORD, PENNSYLVANIA

FREDERICK FABERSelf-Deceit

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Monkeys can look grave when they scratch oneanother. But then they are monkeys. … After all,we are monkeys, and we only grow into men byknowing that we are not men yet.

Frederick Faber

Published 1949 by Pendle HillRepublished electronically © 2003 by Pendle Hill

http://www.pendlehill.org/pendle_hill_pamphlets.htmemail: [email protected]


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Introduction

Friend, you have in your hands one of the mostdisturbing pieces of writing you are likely ever to pick up.Buy a copy, but by no means read it until you feel inwardadventure rising within you. This may well offer asmomentous an adventure for you as 1492 offered Columbus.There is a yet undiscovered land for each of us: our trueinward self. Our inward hemisphere is vast and we mayperish for want of a guide. Here is a guide who shows us, aswell as any man can show another, the hidden obstacles wesimply do not want to see.

This might be called a devotional book, but in theliterature of piety hardly anything like it was seen before itspublication in 1858; all too few have been seen since. Theauthor tells us that he faced the alternative of writing inanger or tears, and that he decided simply to laugh his waythrough the whole matter. Faber’s humor is not, however,assumed for the occasion. Humor, a divine humor, is histrue nature, and we do not know him otherwise. And indeedthe levity of a righteous man who has endured much is asingularly pure form of instruction in Truth.

For humor of Faber’s sort is nothing more than a truesense of proportion. Could anything be more hilariouslyabsurd than the disproportion exhibited by a man whospends a life time pleasing and pampering his body, whenall the time he is essentially a spirit? Could anything bemore tragically upside down than man’s reserving everythingfor himself and leaving nothing to Him who made everything?

Much of Faber’s humor arises from a continualawareness that spirit and body are divinely, inextricablyand often ludicrously bound together. Refusing to face thisinterconnection, most of us settle down to self-deceit. Faber,in the course of a life of devout self-examination, trackeddown its every subtlety. His writings are like whitewashedchapel walls covered with great cartoons, not of the twelve


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disciples, but of us in our self-important seriousness. Weare all there, carefully drawn with the divine facetiousnesswhich our disproportionate lives call for. To some readerssuch wit may seem impious. This cannot be helped; theyare, I fear, mostly folk holding on to themselves — lackingfaith in God they dare not set loose. They dare not be inwardlymerry.

Faber’s guardian angel was one Philip of Neri. The firstbiography I read of this saint was highly and seriouslysupernatural. It was claimed, for instance, that the Masswas so rapturous an experience for him that at the heightof the service he was frequently lifted from his feet and madeto float in mid-air before the altar. But another biographerpushed a bit further. He said that St. Philip came to realizethat unnatural flying about aroused the astonishment butnot the true piety of the congregation. So he resolved toshow some control, and this he accomplished by secretingin his gown a joke book. When carried aloft he would quicklypull out the “Joe Miller” and, covertly reading a passage,find himself back on sure footing. Philip was a saint notbecause he floated in the air but because he could laughhimself down to earth. Frederick Faber has just such a sharpsense of the relationship of body and spirit.

Stories of a similar sort are told about Faber himself.Friedrich von Hüge1 reports that when Faber “was lingeringon in a tedious last illness, he asked whether he might havethe Last Sacraments once again. But the doctor declaredthat this was really the same illness as that in which hehad already received them, hence the Superior had to refusethe sick man’s request. ‘Well, if I cannot have the LastSacraments, give me Pickwick!’ exclaimed Faber. A goodhomely example,” adds von Hügel, “of the Supernatural andthe Natural, and of how well they can coexist in the same,in a thoroughly fervent soul.”

Von Hügel reports again that when Faber “preachedthe panegyric of St. Ignatius Loyola, on the occasion of the


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Feast of the Founder of the Jesuits … he spent an hour inunbroken, sympathetic, indeed fervent exposition of thissaint’s spirituality, and only in his last sentence did heintroduce the necessary limitation and expansion: ‘This then,my dear brethren, is St. Ignatius’ way to heaven; and, thankGod, it is not the only way!’”

Frederick William Faber was born in 1814 at Calverley,Yorkshire where his grandfather was vicar. At Oxford hecame under the influence of John Henry Newman, and aftera long mental struggle and a term of service in the Anglicanchurch, he went over to the church of Rome. During his lifehe suffered great bodily agony. Until his death in 1863 hislife was crowded with preaching, extensive writing andorganizational work in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. He isbest known for his many hymns which are sung in Protestantchurches the world over. Singing such hymns as “Faith ofOur Fathers” and “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” welittle suspect that the author of these simple words is also apsychologist hardly to be excelled for his penetration intothe complexities of inner life. We have come unhappily tothink of psychologists and psychiatrists as narrowlyspecialized professionals with a jargon all their own. Thefact is, the greatest psychologists have been religious andliterary men — Socrates, Augustine, Dostoievsky, to namebut three. Faber, while not of their genius, is of their lineagein that he matches wisdom about interior growth with thepower to inspire it.

These essays on self-deceit come from the volume thatFaber named Spiritual Conferences, because they haveneither the formality of a lecture nor the dignity of a sermon.In editing them I have contented myself, for the most part,with trimming their Victorian drapery. Faber has writtenmuch else that still speaks to our condition, but I havechosen these essays in the conviction that the failure of ourworld is the failure of worship; and all worship, be it Quaker,Episcopalian, Muslim, or what not, must have within it some


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place for self-examination. Here we are at a loss and Faberspeaks to that loss. Perhaps you are one of the many whosay, “There is enough darkness in the world. When I go tochurch I want to hear happy things.” Faber’s point isprecisely this: much, if not most, of the world’s darknesscomes from self-deceit and illusions about ourselves. Shallwe not bless the man who is able to lead us into the darkparts of holy disillusion and out again to a new height?

In our worship, of course, self-examination must alwaysgive way to adoration, to a beholding of God, whose goodnessand love fill our need. In this act of simply feeling God’spresence the poor little self just subjected to examination isin a large measure lost sight of, and in that loss, purified.But we dare not skip the first steps. Without self-examinationand confession to God, common morality, acts of charityand worship itself will turn sour within us and we shall beten times worse than if we had never heard of religion.

The intricacies of self-deceit are so complex they makethe involvements of a modern detective story read as simplyas a nursery tale. But no matter, read this as you would amystery story — life is a mystery story. And, if courage fails,glance at the end and see that all may end well — not justhappily, but truly well.

You may be tempted, reader, before you finish thesepages, to grind them under your foot. That is all right, but ifyou do find yourself distraught over them, make sure youknow why. Forgive me if I say: be not deceived about Faberon self-deceit. He has his faults to be sure. Von Hügelsuggests that he sometimes speaks like a Salvation ArmyHallelujah lass and leaves little to the imagination of hisreaders. But to tag him “negative” and “depressive” (in orderto get him out of your mind) is to overlook that thesecharacteristics come straight from the heart of the Gospel,from Jesus with His call to deny self and take up the cross,His teaching that it is better to cut off the hand than let itoffend, His tears for a people all gone astray. The fact is, the


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Bible is frightening, withering in its picture of unregeneratehuman nature.

Pleasant devotional tracts are to be had in every churchvestibule. Somehow their claim to make prayer easy doesn’tbring us to the strength of the Gospels. The way to the simpleTruth is complex and hard. There is no path but the narrowpath, and it passes through a hard gate. Faber’s writingsare of this deep, hard order and we may be sure that theywill continue to work secretly within us, long after we haveput the written words aside.

Gilbert KilpackPendle Hill, Eleventh Month, 1949


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Self-Deceit

A truthful man is the rarest of all phenomena. Perhapshardly any of us have ever seen one. It is far from unlikelythat we have not. Thorough truthfulness is undoubtedlythe most infrequent of graces. The grace of terrific austerityand bodily macerations, which has characterized some ofthe saints, the grace to love suffering, the grace of ecstasy,the grace of martyrdom, all these are commoner graces thanthat of thorough truthfulness. The fact is, we are all of usthoroughly untruthful, those of us most so who thinkourselves least so, those of us least so who think ourselvesmost so. The first step towards being truthful is theknowledge that we are far from it; for out of that knowledgefollows the hatred, the determination, and the aim, whichbears us on towards truthfulness. We have no idea howuntruthful we are, until we come to examine ourselves. Wemust not therefore be content with a general admission ofguilt: but we must go into ourselves, and ferret out the wholeof the misery and corruption. It is worth while spendingtwo-thirds of our life in doing this work alone, trying to beless of liars than we are. Rude words! yet not unfriendlyones, as the issue will show.

It is of little use to plunge into this repulsive subject ofself-deceit, unless we are conscious to ourselves of a manlydetermination to make a thorough work of it. Whoever hasnot got that, had better read no further, or else he willmistake what is said. A man always makes a mistake if heapplies to himself what is meant for another. It is to befeared there is a great deal of promiscuous physicking ofourselves, after our neighbor’s prescriptions, in the spirituallife. It is not less ruinous to the constitution of the soul,than a similar practice would be to the constitution of thebody. Whatever is said here is meant only for honest people;to dishonest persons it will mean something quite different,and be by no means beneficial.


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The fountains of self-deceit are four in number: therarity of reliable self-knowledge, self’s power to deceive self,self letting itself be deceived by others, and self deceived bySatan.

No wonder that reliable self-knowledge is rare, whenso few take pains to acquire it. There are few even whohonestly desire it. There are but few men in the world whodesire painful things, however salutary they may be; andself-knowledge is both painful in the acquisition and painfulin the possession. It is incredible how little honesty there isamongst religious people in religious matters. Yet almostevery one claims to be preferring God above all things. Whata mass of unwholesome delusion then must the religiousworld be! It is. A supernatural formalism outside with naturalprinciples of action inside, and a thoroughly natural system,or rather quackery, of spiritual direction to keep thingscomfortable and respectable.

How very little do even good persons know themselves!Much of what they think is the work of grace about them issimply the providential accident of their circumstances. Aman has a very right horror of worldliness, for example,and he thinks, perhaps even thanks God, that he has notendencies that way. Much evil he has, and is conscious ofhaving, but not this. His circumstances of life change. Hebecomes rich, or gets into different society, or his healthimproves and he can do what awhile ago he could not do;and behold! he finds himself worldly, not growing worldlyby a process and under temptation, but worldly withoutany change at all, and with a ready-made worldliness, whichhe has had in his heart all the while. A man cannot beangry in a fainting fit: so this man’s worldliness could notdevelop itself in his old circumstances. It was therenevertheless. Hundreds of people are thoroughly worldly,worldly to the backbone, who flatter themselves they haveno taste for the world at all. The fact is we know but little of


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ourselves, and of the almost inexhaustible possibilities ofevil which we have got shut up within our souls. Is not lifeat every turn making unpleasant revelations of self? Butthey are revelations, and that is noteworthy. Yet what sortof wisdom is it for a man to shun these revelations, becausethey disquiet him, when it will so concern him in the day ofjudgment to have known them? A spiritual life, without avery large allowance of disquietude in it, is no spiritual lifeat all. It is but a flattering superstition of self-love. But fancya spiritual system which is to make everybody at ease andcomfortable, and takes the banishment of the uncomfortableas its grand principle! It would be laughable, indeedintrinsically it is laughable; only we cannot laugh becauseit is such a terribly serious thing for a soul to go wrong.

Now it is of the last importance to observe, that withgood persons the stronghold of worldliness is in this absenceof reliable self-knowledge. Yet they are worldly, or theybecome worldly, from the want of self-knowledge. As to thefact, that can hardly be a question. Is it not the standingscandal of the world that strange medley of worldliness anddevotion which is so common among professedly piouspeople, that the world, which does not take a particularlyaccurate view of the matter, pronounces it to be universal?We have prayer and fine dress, alms and luxuriousextravagance, sacraments and love of eating and drinking,humility and exclusiveness, spiritual conferences and theworship of great people, communions and cheap theatricals,works of mercy and a scheming to push advantageousconnections, interior life and fine furniture — all mingledup in close union and inextricable confusion.

Worldliness is an immense number of allowable detailsissuing in an unallowable end. This is partly from theaccumulation, and partly from the hold the details have onour affections. Things, which are not wrong in themselves,become wrong when they stand between us and God,unspeakably wrong when they usurp God’s place in our


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hearts. We do not see the real malice of the separatecomponent parts of worldliness, because we do not reallyknow ourselves, and are thus unable to estimate the badeffects, or even the peculiar effects, which make this or thatillicit amusement become inexpedient in our case, or acertain amount of it downright poison. In the analysis ofworldliness, we have to do with questions of kind andquestions of degree. Anything like a safe judgment in eitherof these two classes of questions is impossible without self-knowledge. In a word, the secret power of worldliness is inour ignorance of ourselves, not an unsuspecting ignorance,but an ignorance with a bad conscience, which we will notforce to learn its crabbed lesson of self. All supernaturalprinciples and all religious manliness are based on genuinereliable self-knowledge. Give that conclusion leave to do itswork in your soul, and you will see what a change it willbring about!

The second fountain of self-deceit is self directlydeceiving self. There are many ways in which this unhappyend is compassed. Vanity is one of the most universal. Weall put an absurdly high price upon ourselves. The mercurygenerally stands too high in us, and indicates wrongly,unless grace holds it down by main force. Even when wehave too much sense to speak, we are always inwardlycommenting upon our own actions in a most partial manner,and often with a very ingenious and far-fetched partiality.We cherish our own plans, until it is hard to see how Godcan have any glory at all beyond the sphere of our owninfluence, except in other spheres very far away. But thespheres which confine on our own are mistakes, and oughtnever to have been there at all. Our vocation is to absorbthem. This is our view. There is nothing too extravagant forthe vanity of our self-love. It does not know an exaggerationwhen it sees it. Like some oriental languages, its commonestexpressions are hyperboles. We should all make open foolsof ourselves through vanity, if it were not for three things.


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First of all, many of us are saved by knowledge of the world,which always carries on famous warfare against self’sabsurdities. Secondly, many are rescued from exposingthemselves, because they have a turn for humor and a keensense of the ridiculous. Thirdly, grace saves some, byteaching them to put down within themselves thoseinordinate risings of self-importance, which would elseexpose them to the contempt of others, though it is not forthat reason they are to put them down. An honest humoroussense of ridicule is a great help to holiness. Perhaps naturedoes not contribute a greater help to grace than this.

Then, again, we deceive ourselves by dwelling on self;for self by a law of its own nature must needs see itselferroneously. The mother can see no imperfection in the babeshe is fondling. In her eyes the most hideous little creatureis charming. But self nursing self — the fondest mothersare no match for it in this respect. Brooding on self is a sortof spiritual opium-eating. Nothing but phantasms can comeof it. It is through this brooding on self that we arrive atanother way of deceiving ourselves; and that is by confusing,almost without seeing it, feelings with facts, and desireswith practices. In other words self-love knows how to blendmost skillfully its ideal with its realization of its ideal, sothat not only shall nobody else know what is theory andwhat is practice, but even self shall not be able, at leastwith anything like assurance, to discern between the two.Multitudes of souls live through life in a bright haze of thiskind.

We deceive ourselves also by palliating what isacknowledgedly wrong. There is almost always a runningcommentary of secret self-excuse passing through ourminds. We admit certain actions, or more frequently certainomissions, to be wrong. But we consider that there issomething quite peculiar in our circumstances, which makesthem less wrong in us than they would be in others.Sometimes it is our temperament, sometimes our health,


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sometimes our position, sometimes the provocation we havereceived. Sometimes we pardon ourselves with the verygentlest of reprimands, because we feel that the good pointsof our character are on the other side of us, as it were, andthat this particular failing has the misfortune to light uponthe barren or the weak side of us — and whose character iseither complete or equable? So we must think of our oppositegood points, by way of comfort and compensation.

The third fountain of self-deceit is self letting itself bedeceived by other things or persons, by things or personsexternal to itself. It is not always easy to distinguish thisprocess from self deceiving self; but there is a difference.When we lay ourselves out for praise, or even very obviouslyacquiesce in it, we are letting ourselves be deceived by others,often without fault of theirs. We do not plead guilty to halfthe amount of love of praise which we have in us. It is quitepreposterous even in the humblest of us. We live lives ofprayer and sacraments, and yet are all the while itching forpraise. Who ever saw anyone that was not? The gravest,sleekest, most pompous of men, smooth themselves downand unbend themselves in glossy patronizing benevolenceunder the siren breath of praise, like the swell of a summersea when the gentle south wind blows. Cold men thaw withan amusing reluctant eagerness under the same operation,and dignity descends even to playfulness under the resistlessattractions of praise. Silent men however are the grand loversof praise. They are ruminating creatures; self is the cud:they chew, and, strange to say, they do not find it bitter.Like thirsty camels in the desert who suck up the muddiestwater with relish, so we with praise are almost regardless ofits quality. No matter how absurd, how unmerited, howexaggerated, or from what feminine or childish incapacityof just appreciation it may spring, wise and grave men amongus drink it down. We set a value upon it and attach animportance to it and feed on its scraps, in a manner whichought to make us thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. All we


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require is that certain rules of good taste should be observedby those who administer this sweet spoon-meat to us grown-up babies. But these rules vary with national character. AnIrishman must be praised differently from an Englishman,and an American and a Frenchman differently from both,and from each other. But praised we must all be, or wesulk. Monkeys can look grave when they scratch each other.But then they are monkeys. We are men, gifted with reason:how is it we do not smile at an operation which is really soabsurd? Because we do not know ourselves. Whoever knewan eminent lover of praise, who did not imagine he waspeculiarly above public opinion? Or whoever knew a manthat boasted of his independence of the judgments of others,who was not servile, and base, and touchy, and fawning,and deceitful, and vain? After all, we are monkeys, and weonly grow into men by knowing that we are not men yet.

We compel others to deceive us by the way in which wetalk to them about ourselves. This especially applies toreligious conversation, and to all talk about our owncharacters and peculiarities. Now here we have analternative. Either we ought to keep our inward life muchmore secret than we do, or we ought to let it be much moreunreservedly known. The middle course is practically to telllies. The right thing is not to talk about self at all. All self-talk is wretched and mean. Yet it would be difficult to namea practice of Christian perfection harder than the avoidingof it. If we have ever made a real effort to hold our tonguesabout ourselves for any considerable length of time, we havefound out that there may be some things which look easy,and yet are next door to impossibilities. Nevertheless, if wewill talk of self, we ought to say much more than we do. Ifwe tell people how our hearts warm with love of God, weought also to tell them how those same hearts are cheeredby having nice things to eat and drink. If we make knownour practices of prayer, we ought also to make known ourattachment to handsome furniture and becoming dress. If


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we say how much time and money go to visiting and relievingthe poor, we ought also to say how selfish and inconsideratewe are towards our servants, in the matter of their health,comfort, temper, sensibilities, and the like. If we publishour good side, we ought also to publish our bad side; elsewe are practically telling an untruth, making people believethat we are far more noble-minded than we really are, andso causing them by praise, respect, and admiration, to reactupon ourselves in the shape of self-deceit.

Alas! the idolatry of domestic affections is another wayin which we let ourselves be deceived by others Everybodyis thought so good in his own family. Men must be notablybad to have the honors of this household canonizationwithheld from them. It is like living in air drugged withluscious incense. Conscience is half stifled in it. This is achief delight of home to our poor conceited nature. It is oneof the first principles of the spiritual life that each manshould be in his own sight what he is in the sight of God,and nothing more. Yet there are few women, and fewer men,who are not in their own sight what they are in the sight oftheir family. It is moreover to be feared that God’s point ofview and the family point of view are very far from identicalin most cases. We fall into a sort of happy optimism in ourfamilies, which is marvelously unsuspicious of its ownabsurdity.

Spiritual books are outward things, and they also canmake us unreal. No soul spins a grosser web of self-deceitaround itself, than the one that habitually reads spiritualbooks above its spiritual condition, or in any other wayunfitted for its existing circumstances. Common states ofprayer look uncommon to the man who is always readingbooks of mystical theology. Converts particularly are alwaysmistaking common graces for uncommon ones. Indeedmystical theology can be made into a sham more easily thanmost things that are real. If we are for ever reading of pureand disinterested love of God, we readily come to think that


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our love for Him is such as we read of. Heroic thoughts areinfectious, and we soon swell with them. But they will notdo duty for heroic deeds. They only give an air ofsentimentality to our religion, when we are not making anyreal effort to act upon them. When a spiritual book does notmortify us and keep us down, it is sure to puff us up andmake us untruthful. Its doctrine gets into our head, and wecommit follies.

Another way, in which we let ourselves be deceived byothers, is by seeking guidance where we expect leastcontradiction. How honest hearts can be so dishonest asthey are, is a mystery which meets us at every turn in thespiritual life; and here is one of the most glaring examplesof it.

Have we not half made up our own minds on mostsubjects, before we have consulted our guide, and has notour aim rather been to elicit such a verdict as we wish, thanto know his calm and dispassionate and uninfluencedjudgment? All this is wild work: God being considered, andthe soul, and eternal possibilities! In these days of railwayfrauds, we are always hearing of accounts being “cooked.”Now I have no very clear idea of how to “cook” accounts,and should hardly know how to set about it, from want ofexperience in accounts altogether: but I greatly suspect thatwhat we do with our statements to our spiritual guide is to“cook” them.

Bear with my foolishness. See if I do not say somesensible things in the course of it, which if I had said gravely,would have been less sensible.

From spiritual guides I pass to the devil. Perhaps anabrupt transition: but not so, when you come to think of it.For when self-deceit gets to feed upon spiritual dainties,the evil one can never be very far off. This brings me to mynext division, self deceived by Satan.

One of his wiles is to fill us with indiscreet andunseasonable aspirations: indiscreet, because they are out


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of all proportion to our grace, and unseasonable, becausethey are especially unbefitting our present condition. Strangeto say! there is something congenial between grace andnature. Hence it is that certain forms of holiness come almostnatural to a man, suit his disposition, elicit the excellencesof his individual character, and transform his nature ratherthan supplant it. Then again there are other forms ofholiness, which in particular souls seem to have occultaffinities with evil. With them they are akin to temptations.They leave the weak places in the soul unguarded, anddevelop what rather requires subduing. They are not meantfor those souls, but for others. Now all God’s work everywhereis a work of order; and therefore the devil finds his accountin disturbing this order; and in the spiritual life, he cannotmore effectually accomplish this than by filling devout peoplewith indiscreet and unseasonable aspirations.

Now see how the devil draws us on beyond mereaspirations. He entangles us in unsuitable good works. Why,one might almost prefer a sin to this. Observe the almost, ifyou please. There is nothing like an unsuitable good workfor keeping us back from God. It enlists against Him all thatis best and least selfish in our nature. Set an active soul tocontemplate, and one of two results will follow, hypochondriaor worldliness. Immerse a contemplative soul in business,and you will have either melancholy or delusion. Bend aperson to much mental prayer, when they ought to be sewingat home, or helping the poor, and you will produce a self-righteous, inflated, stupefied simulation of interior holiness,which would ruffle the good humor of an angel.

Last of all, our spiritual enemy is always enticing us tospeed. This is the fatallest of fatal things. Are there any ofyou, who once were different from what you are now? Arethere any who mourn over a delicacy of conscience whichhas grown callous and hard, over the cold ash-strewn hearth,where the flames of divine love once burned but are now


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extinct, over a nearness of God which has gone back like an

ebb tide down the sands, over a hundred great graces once

within reach, but now mere words never to have realities? If

it is so, has it not for the most part been speed which has

done all the mischief? To be slow, this is what St. Francis of

Sales and Fenelon teach, and what you must learn. There

are endless reasons for it. I will only mention the one which

connects the duty with the avoidance of self-deceit. It is

this: speed, in spiritual matters, is always followed by

darkness.

The power of the kingdom of sin rests simply in self-

deceit. The picture, you think, is gloomy. I grant it. Yet not

disheartening. It is the old story. You will not serve God out

of love, and then you abuse preachers for unsettling you.

You want unsettling. I wish I could unsettle you. I wish you

had the grace to be unsettled. Digging does good. It loosens

roots, and lets in sun and rain. What can be more vexatious

than an obstinate shrub which will not grow? It always

reminds me of souls — so stiff, and concentrated, and dull,

and pert, and self-satisfied in its yellow primness. A simple

childlike love of Jesus always goes safely through these

dangers of self-deceit, almost without being aware of their

existence. There is something intensely sickly about the

spiritual life. It is nothing but unbandaging, examining sores,

bandaging them up again, smelling-salts, rooms with blinds

down, and I know not what dishonorable invalidisms and

tottering convalescences. It seems to me no slight temptation

to love God with a headlong love, in order that one’s soul

may not be sickened with these degrading symptoms or

valetudinarian sensations of the spiritual life, but live robust,

out-of-doors kind of religious existence. Yet many people

like to be ill, specially to be ill in mind. It shows how little

the thought of God is in them; for that thought, grave, kindly,

sober, earnest, is an inexorable exorcism of all sickliness.


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The Varieties Of Self-Deceit

If the varieties of grace are numberless, the varieties ofself-deceit are well nigh able to match them. We shall get astep further into our disagreeable subject by glancing atsome of these varieties, selecting those which we meet withmost commonly in daily life. There are in fact seven species,which we may name the fundamental self-deceits, as one orother of them seems to lie at the bottom of every possiblemodification of delusion.

There is, first of all, the self-deceit which takes noadvice. Everyone knows that the delusions of the spirituallife are so amazing as to be incredible. A man neglects theduties which God has given him to do, and spends all hisday in church, and yet imagines himself a special favoriteof God. Even monks and nuns can mistake singularity forperfection. There is a false modesty, and a false humility, adeluded penance and a deluded prayer. Delusion iseverywhere, and yet to us looking on, it is unaccountablehow the victim does not at once see through the delusion.Now, in a great number of cases, all these worlds of delusionare created by the self-deceit which takes no advice.

Then there are some dispositions, which are not at alltempted to talk, but tempted — for it is a veritable temptation— to hold their tongues. These are men who, unlike Solomon,have never happened on a right time to speak. So they makeplans, either with no counselors but themselves, or withonly such as they know to be at best but selves at secondhand. Their plans grow into them, and length of time ismistaken for maturity of deliberation. These plans twinkleand oscillate through their prayers, and so at least seem tohave the light of a quasi-divine sanction upon them: andwith all conceivable respectability, and without one externaladmonitory symptom of self-seeking, these men have at lastcome to mistake self-opinionatedness for judicious reserve,through the self-deceit which takes no advice. This form of


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self-deceit tends very rapidly to become incurable; and whenit has once taken hold of a man, he can only be roused upby a rare miracle of grace, and most often he is not rousedup at all.

Then there is a self-deceit, which is always takingadvice, and, what is perhaps worse, always taking it ofeverybody. This vice belongs to men who have as manydirectors as a king has privy counselors, men whoseweakness of character is such that they publish their plansin confidence to every one they meet, and have to end, as itwere, of sheer necessity, by taking no advice at all, becausethe persuasions on the right hand are so completelyneutralized by the dissuasions on the left hand, that theman’s mind becomes almost a blank. These are the men,we see them daily, who are always undertaking things, andwho never succeed in anything they undertake.

But when we regard this endless seeking of counsel asa delusion, as one of the varieties of self-deceit, we soondiscover that no little dishonesty mingles with this weakness.A man, who is always asking advice, suspects himself ofbeing in the wrong even if he does not go further thansuspicion. A real uneasiness of conscience lies at the bottomof it all; and consequently, if he is not trying to make himselfuncomfortable in a state of things which he half knows oughtto make him uncomfortable, there is something more orless hopeful in his case, even in spite of the dishonesty.For, a grain or two less of dishonesty, and the suspicionmight become a salutary self-distrust. Yet in order that thisprocess may take place, it is necessary that he should holdhis tongue. But here is the difficulty. For the more he talksand asks and communicates, the more the dishonesty grows.He is throwing dust in his own eyes at every word. The moreobstinate he grows, the more eloquently is he persuadinghimself of his own docility. Every additional counselor makeshim less able to discern the truth. Every step he takes bringshim nearer to the doing of his own will. Some men are snaresto others; this man is a snare to himself.


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Then we have for our third variety the complacent self-deceit. Where this exists, it seems born with a man.Nevertheless we need not despair of straightening even thetwists we bring with us into the world, though it is a moredifficult matter than straightening what outward circum-stances, and even habitual sins, have bent. Some men havea strong faith in themselves, which no number of mistakesor misfortunes can shake. Experience is unpersuasive tothem. Practically speaking, their own infallibility is the fixedpoint of their compass. Whatever else moves, that cannotmove. Whatever else is called in question, that must not be.There is always a quiet optimism about them. It is quiet,because it cannot conceive the possibility of doubting itself.There is an external reason for every failure, which noforesight could have calculated, and against which noprudence could have guarded. If what they have done wasnot simply and absolutely the best thing, it was the best forthe time and place and circumstances. Indeed they considerthemselves entitled to additional credit, precisely becausethey consented to waive the best thing, and humblethemselves to circumstances with the wise condescensionof discretion. These are men with whom all tokens areprovidential, and all interpositions miraculous. They failwithout knowing that they fail, because all things look soprovidential in their particular case. Their piety takes theshape of inspirations, and what is natural about them hasa ruinous tendency to extravasate into the supernatural.Their devotion can never run long in a common groove, norindeed in any one groove at all. Their dreams even sometimesbecome motives of action. Hence they are wayward andchangeable. They are not only receiving inspirations everymoment, but even cross inspirations. Such men listen toadvice with all the composure of self-righteousness, withalmost a pathetic appearance of patience, as if they werecarrying a cross, and sharing in the mortifications of thesaints. For how improper to advise them! Their position,


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their name, their antecedents, all should have guaranteedthem from the impertinent simplicity of advice; and thequarter from which the advice has come is just the quarterfrom which it ought not to have come. But they bear it withadmirable meekness, remembering how hidden andunsuspected all goodness for the most part is in this naughtyworld. Perhaps we may say of these men, without offendingcharity, that they are not very likely candidates for thehonors of canonization. Yet perhaps a great number of themexpect their lives will be written.

But we have another form of self-deceit, which iscensorious. There are men who are always so sure they arein the right, that they set themselves up as a standard bywhich to judge others. So undoubting is their self-confidence,that they are not conscious they are making any uncommonclaim to the confidence of others, when they thus putthemselves forward as a standard. To abstain to do so wouldin their estimation be an act of false humility. As a manlives a man’s life all the day long without particularlyadverting to the fact that he is not an angel or a beast, butsimply a man, so these persons are judging others all theday long, without adverting to it, as if they came into theworld for the sole and express purpose of judging others,and the wonder would be if they did anything else. But,while the complacent self-deceivers habitually reflect withpleasure on their own being in the right, the less amiable,though really more practical, censorious self-deceivers preferto contemplate with satisfaction the fact that others are inthe wrong. The latter therefore are less to be loved, while atthe same time there is much more real work to be got out ofthem. It is astonishing how accurate their unfavorablejudgments of others are. It is as if practice conferred a skillupon uncharitableness, which gave it almost theunerringness of a science. Thus they make fewer mistakesthan the complacent self-deceivers. For the world is really avery bad world, and most people are in the wrong; and there


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is a kind of reputation to be got by always prophesying dismalthings, and a kind of influence to be obtained by frighteningothers with our sarcasm and detraction, and even a kind ofsuccess, which to an unamiable man is better than none,in getting out of the way of a scrape into which others fall.Few men, even among good men, aim at anything high inlife, and a few crumbs of success are nourishment enoughto souls that can swallow a sea of flattery. These censoriousmen are generally calm and tranquil, because of theunshaken placidity of their self-confidence. Hence they havefor the most part a great dislike of enthusiasm. It is contraryto the genius of the critical spirit to be enthusiastic. A man’sheart gets cold if he does not keep it warm by living in it;and a censorious man is one who ordinarily lives out of hisown heart. In matters of religious detail these men have aninstinctive aversion to liberty of spirit, and while they indulgethemselves to a dangerous amount in liberty of practice,they are severe upon liberty of spirit in others. They aremen who cannot easily understand what another man caninwardly be like who acts from love; and hence they thinkliberty of spirit to be only an unblushing proclamation ofthat infrequency of prayer, perfunctoriness of examinationof conscience, and tepidity of sorrow for sin, which theythemselves keep secret as the realities of their own interiorlife. A rigorous theology is one of the cheapest modes ofrespectability; and he, who represents the road to heavenas hard to others, is most probably leading an easy lifehimself. A censorious man is either under the voluptuousdominion of self-indulgence, or the unworthy subjection ofhuman respect. Yet this is one of the commonest forms ofself-deceit. It is moreover hard to cure, because its heart isinaccessible. It seems almost to require the shock of a greatsin, which, by shattering the lordly edifice of self-respect,may let in upon the soul the light of salutary shame.

There is a fifth variety of self-deceit, which is ambitious.Ambition aims at a distant object, which can only be obtained


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slowly. Yet it is by no means a patient quality. While it needspatience perhaps more than any other vice does, it has byno means a fair share of it. It is a quick, impetuous, impatientpassion, perpetually overreaching itself in its calculations,and peculiarly liable to mistake the means for the end. Thisambitious self-deceit confounds single actions with formedhabits; and if by a more than common impulse of grace aman has been able in one instance to do something generousfor God, this self-deceit leads him to suppose that he hasalready acquired a saintly habit, towards which this actionhas been the first step only. Contrary experience irritatesrather than undeceives him. He grows petulant with God.He has adopted practices of devotion which are above thelevel of his attainments. He has ventured upon a familiarityin prayer, which he conceived suited to his perfection, butwhich has been in his case, however holy in itself, simplyprejudicial to his reverence. He dares to speak complaininglyto God. He would fain contemplate, without the previouspains of assiduous meditation. He would love suffering, buthe has spared himself in the matter of bodily mortification.He would serve God with a purely disinterested love, but hehas never been half sorry enough for his sins. He passedthrough the earlier stages of the spiritual life at a bound,and leaped into high things, and has starved his soul uponmysticism when he would have grown fat upon commonpiety. Here is altogether a very incurable case, and not avery uncommon one! But what is the man’s end? He beganby imitating the saints in what was inimitable, and he endsby giving up religion under discouragement. He commencedby being voracious of the supernatural, and he finishes byfinding the common exercises of faith a difficult attainment.

Then there is the self-deceit, which is scrupulous. It isodious to have to speak of it. The older we get, the less goodcan we see in scruples. Experience and age both convinceus that the look of respectability, which we once thoughtthere was about scrupulous men, was a mere delusion. They


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all turn out badly. Huge continents of puerile conceit arebeing discovered in their souls every year. They are eatenup with that unassuming assumption, which is the mostwicked of all the varieties of censoriousness. It perverselyfixes its attention on wrong things, that is, on things whichit need not particularly attend to, and it does this exclusively.Meanwhile it is perfectly unscrupulous in things which area scandal, or a ruling passion, or an occasion of sin, or abesetting temptation. On the whole, it pays very littleattention to its behavior to others, or to their feelings. It issnappish, and sour, and uncongenial, and intractable; andall this foolish people sometimes put down to sanctity. Ithas in its nature a deep well of tranquil self-exaltation, andon the surface it has the fidgets in religion.

Lastly, there is the self-deceit which is falsely humble.It has a great affinity to the scrupulous self-deceit, butperhaps comes more near to be incurable. It is true thatself-deceit is a mark both of intellectual and moral weakness.But then there are few characters in the world which havenot at least one point, at which they are both intellectuallyand morally weak. With some the intellectual weaknesscomes from the moral; with most the moral comes from theintellectual. We must not therefore be surprised at findingapparently strong and clear characters, which arenevertheless the victims of this extremely foolish self-deceitwhich arises from false humility. Every one feels thathumility is preeminently the saintly virtue, and thereforeevery one aims at mastering it. But it is uncommonly difficultto master, while it seems almost impossible to nature to goon believing itself so little good as it must believe itself, solong as it believes itself not to be humble. Hence somethingmust be done in order to shorten the process of itsacquisition. Unfortunately some of the saints haveoccasionally spoken ill of themselves. Whereupon we alsowill speak ill of ourselves, not in the least believing what wesay, and still less conceding any right to others to believe


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us. Every man in the world has his little circle of flatterers,just as an insect has its parasites. These are either foolishenough or insincere enough to be pleased with our self-abuse; and we, finding it a cheap heroism, are by no meanseconomical in the matter. But this self-abuse has aremarkable tendency to produce spiritual blindness. A manin this state is ignorant of that, which of all things in thespiritual life it is most necessary for him to know, his ownwant of courage. This is because his false humility neverallows him to try himself. He thinks, in his artificial self-abjection, which has now become real without becomingtrue, that he ought only to attempt low things for God; andtherefore he does what is below his strength, without tryingwhat is level with it or above it. Yet, mean-spirited as itgrows, this self-deceit is not without a kind of pride in itssafety and discretion, while it does not see at all its peculiarlyodious form of ungenerosity.

The Characteristics Of Self-Deceit

The first characteristic of self-deceit which strikes usis its seemingly boundless power, as compared with othertemptations, which by their own nature are more partial.Indeed it is something more than a temptation. It appearsto be a law of our soul’s infirmity, a law inevitable to ourpresent condition, and which grace itself cannot altogetherrepeal. For, just as matter and body have their inseparableinfirmities, so spirit and soul have theirs. Its genius isuniversal, and thus, like the air, gives no warning of itspresence. But self-deceit is everywhere. It is a sort ofcaricature of grace. It goes before and it follows after; itsuggests conduct, and it confers perseverance; it underliesour actions like the earth, or overarches them like the sky;it walks by the side of them, or it fuses itself into them: itpraises them in self-love; it reproaches them out of a falseconscience; it gives us a light to see by, and the light blinds


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us; the two opposite states of activity and repose are equallysuited for its operations; it hides itself and shows itself withalternations as indistinguishable as the vibrations of ahumming-bird’s wings. Intolerable companion! always instep, never fatigued, indifferent to hill or vale, to wood orswamp, to town or field, to land or sea, for ever invisiblymocking and mimicking the gait of our beloved GuardianAngel, and entrapping us into blind plots to baffle theintelligent kindness of that dear fraternal Spirit! Life becomesirritating with this consciousness attached to it. No one canbear to be dogged. Moreover this self-deceit is alwaystriumphant, always on the laugh, always making game ofus. Change as we will in natural things, we are equally itsprey. Nay it almost grows with our grace. Grace gives it newopportunities, fresh theatres, and opens to its spiteful gleea delighted diversity of fresh experiments.

A second characteristic of self-deceit is its deep-seatedinveteracy. Repeated victories over it seem to give us nohabit of victory over it. No amount of mortification seems tocow it. On the contrary all the measures taken against itappear to invigorate it. It finds its way everywhere, and fliesunder pressure, unharmed and whole as quicksilver. Itcannot be gathered up, held fast, submitted to any operation,or detached from the various circumstances of life. Onemoment concentrated, and the next moment diffused, itbaffles all pursuit. Vigilance does little to help us. To watchit makes us wise about it, as watching the stars helps us intheorizing about them, while it gives us no control over themin their paths. We never grow expert in our warfare with it,because it hardly ever attacks us twice quite in the samemanner. Indeed attack is a wrong word to use. Evenstratagem hardly expresses the peculiarly quiet initiative,which self-deceit takes in all things. It is passive, or ratheractive in the same way in which any corrosive matter isactive. It does not affect war, but peace. It wants to livequietly in our lives, or rather to live our lives for us, and be


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a kind of soul to us. It is this peculiarity which enables it tobe so inveterate. Many bad things are inveterate in us, butnone are so inveterate as this.

Then, in the next place, we must note its ability to puton the appearance of good. No wonder the devil’s primeminister should possess so much of the devil’s chief talent.Yet we hardly do justice to this characteristic of self-deceit,when we call it an ability to assume the disguise of virtue.For it always wears it. It is its normal state, its law ofgravitation, something essential to its being. If it looked evilwe should never be deceived by it. I hope there are few menin the world who deliberately, and without the disturbingforce of passion or temptation, choose evil with the certaintythat it is evil, and in spite of that certainty. I do not believethat any creature out of hell chooses evil because it is evil.But even if it were so, there is no self-deceiving here. Self-deceit is that which makes us do the devil’s work, believing,though not always with an entirely honest faith, that it isGod’s. The incomparable perfection with which self-deceitcan put on endless disguises, and hardly ever be found outin any of them, is the grand characteristic of its inauspiciousgenius.

But it has a weak point, which is another of itscharacteristics. This is its soreness when touched, thoughit is for the most part very hard to touch. It escapesunharmed from our touch, but it sensibly winces under thepain of it. We have all of us certain ways, practices, habits,attitudes, tricks of conduct, which no one can blame us forwithout putting us out of temper. We ourselves hardly knowwhy it should be so. Why should we be unmoved when anunfriendly tongue touches some mode or manifestation ofour conceit, and explode like gunpowder when it touchessome other, which is neither more guilty, nor, which is tobe chiefly considered from this point of view, more disgracefulor more ridiculous? We cannot tell. Very often we cannotanalyze it, when our attention is called to it. Generally


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speaking, it is a betrayal of self-deceit, a discovery of theutmost moment to us, and one to be fearlessly followed upwithout delay. This sensitiveness of self-deceit is a fortunatecharacteristic of the vice, or rather an ingenuity ofprovidence. It is the rattle in the snake’s tail, sounding whenfor the snake’s purpose it should be silent. Let us take careto search the bush whenever we hear the rattle. Half ourbites would have been saved, if we had always done so.

The coexistence of self-deceit with so much good isanother of its characteristics. It has a genius for alliances.All are natural to it, and fall in with its purposes, and extendits influence. Its power of combination is incredible, untilobservation and experience bring it home to us. It canamalgamate with things which have apparently repugnant,or even antagonistic, qualities. It selects the best ofeverything, and fastens by predilection on that which is mostexcellent. In many instances good drowns evil, when by thehelp of grace it comes to be in excess. But the quantity ofgood only freshens self-deceit, while on the other hand thesmallest quantity of its poison disturbs the greatest quantityof good, and a moderate quantity of the evil is able even toneutralize an enormously disproportionate amount of good.Hypocrisy is generally short-lived, unless it has some amountof piety along with it. So self-deceit purposely abides in theneighborhood of good, in order to be fostered and kept warm.

Self-deceit increases with our age. This is another ofits characteristics. Some weeds grow in our souls by whatappears a chance. Others die, if peculiar circumstances donot nurture them. Some are planted there by a single act ofsin, an act which had neither parents or children, neitherantecedents or consequences, so far as we can see; andthey remain hardly green, barely not dead, and never growat all. But self-deceit is an inevitable growth. The broadeningof life is the widening of our faculties for deceiving ourselves.Simplicity is the only thing which is fatal to self-deceit. Ifwe could be perfectly simple, we could inflict a mortal wound


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upon the monster. But life multiplies things. It entanglesour motives. It distracts our attention. It complicates ourdaily conduct. It bewilders us by its rapidity, its versatility,its contradictoriness, its imperiousness, its fertility. All thesethings are prolific of new possibilities for self-deceit; andself-deceit fills them as air fills a vacuum, silently if allowedits own way and time, with a report if compelled to actsuddenly and under distress. Only of this we may be sure,that the fountain flows more copiously each succeeding year,and that unless grace is evaporating the waters as theyspring, life is but a match between grace and self-deceit, inwhich the latter will be victorious.

It is another characteristic of self-deceit, that itsenergies are quickened as people rise higher in the spirituallife. It has always been a melancholy truth, which noexperienced ascetic has ever thought of gainsaying, that thehigher operations of grace are more subject to delusionsthan the lower, except the very highest, which have to dowith the soul’s uttermost union with God. The higher graces,which stand midway, are replete with delusion preciselybecause they are not high enough to counterbalance ofthemselves the disproportioned weight they lay upon us.Very few, even of those aiming at perfection, rise above thesemiddle graces. Hence it is practically the common rule, that,the higher men rise in the spiritual life, the more subjectthey become to the insidious operations of self-deceit.

But this is not all. Self-deceit seems actually to thriveon prayer, and to grow fat on contemplation. Prayer leadsus into a new world, a world where a different language isspoken, where the forms of the scenery are different, andseen in a differently tinted atmosphere. We are not used tothis, and easily make mistakes. There are no deceptions innature to compare with those of light. We misjudge distancesand sizes; we see things inverted, and even discern thingswhich have nothing but a fantastical existence. It is aprinciple no less true in theology than in natural science,


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that light only gets color by shining through darkness. Inthe world of prayer there are colors which we cannot easilyassign rightly to the object or the atmosphere; there aresplendors which dazzle, and which by dazzling mislead. Habitis the only safety with supernatural things, and by the timewe become habituated to one set of supernatural objectsthe ascensions of grace have raised us into another. In thespiritual life we are always changing our sphere. It wouldnot be life, but stagnation, were it otherwise. No man whohas watched himself well, has failed to observe the way inwhich prayer, regarded as a habit, is beset by self-deceit.

In connection with this, we must notice another of itscharacteristics, which is the opportune and instantaneousmanner in which it seizes on fresh graces, and diverts themto its own ends. The power of a temptation is mostly in itstimeliness. With a nature so weak as ours, so peculiarlyunable to withstand surprises, that which is well-timed,either for good or evil, is almost irresistible. The empire ofself-deceit rests in no slight degree upon the way in which ittimes every move. Then, when this timeliness of self-deceitis applied to the increments of grace which we are continuallyreceiving, the danger and misery of our position becomesobvious. We seem to be in receipt of a good income, for ourdividends are both regular and large. But in truth it is notall our own. Self-deceit levies a large income tax, and it ispaid insensibly as our new graces come, so that we neverknow how much less rich we are than we seem to be. Onlywe know that we are considerably poorer. The discreetmanagement of our grace is one of the most difficult subjectsin the spiritual life.

Thus self-deceit infests nature, and it infests grace. Atone moment it is busy in one of these worlds, at the nextmoment in the other. Hence it is another of its characteristicsthat it is, in some persons habitually, and in others atparticular times, almost indistinguishable from naturalcharacter. I have said before that it is an inevitable growth:


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but a growth of what? Truly, of natural character, in a subjectweakened, unhinged, and overbalanced by sin. Thus thereis a necessary connection between our natural characterand our own mode of self-deceit, although it would be asintolerable as untrue to confound the two things together.Yet this connection enables it, not only to time itself to ourweak moments and to fasten on our weak points, but alsoto assume the look of our disposition so completely, that wemay be unable to recognize ourselves. Then here is thedanger. Almost every man considers his natural character,or some part of it, to be practically a necessity to him. Heconcedes to his disposition at least a limited right to laydown the law to him. He cannot resist this; he cannotovercome that. He assumes these as acknowledged facts inhis government of himself, or rather management of himself.For unluckily self-government is little else but management.Here we arrive at that fountain of self-dispensation uponwhich so many souls make ship-wreck, who cannot discernbetween want of trust in nature and want of trust in grace,between confidence in self and confidence in God. Then self-deceit intervenes, and with an adroitness, which we shouldadmire if it were less pernicious in its effects, insinuatesitself into the privileged parts of our character, into thedispositions we have made up our minds to humor, and sobecomes our law of life. We lie to ourselves, and make thatlie our law.

To this we must also add the humiliatingness of self-deceit. There is a shame quite peculiar to the tight thralldomin which it holds us, whenever we come to perceive it. Thereare no men who shrink more instinctively from self-knowledge, than those who have once detected themselvesin self-deceit. They cannot bear that shame over again. Thedetection has changed them in some respects. They arebetter men for it. Yet in some other respects, unless theyhave great grace, they are worse men also for the self-conviction. As men say at insurance offices, they are better


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lives, but their health is no better. This is especially thecase with beginners in the spiritual life. When they are firstturned loose into the grand prairies of asceticism and thevast forests of meditation, they fall into spiritual gluttony,and mistake unwieldiness for growth in robustness. Theyought to have been sent out, as we used to hear in old yearsof farmers turning their cows into closer fields, with tightgirths of rope round their stomachs lest they should eat tillthey burst. Then by this gluttony men find themselves out.All habits of lying are humiliating: what must self-lying be?So they give up the whole matter in disgust, and turnmoderate, and take to comfort, and lead unsatisfactory lives.

The Remedies Of Self-Deceit

Is there anything substantial in creation? Is there anyone in the world who is real? Is there any spiritual life atall? These are questions which we ask in our almostblameless irritation, when the subject of religious delusionsis fairly brought before us. Self is miserably petty, and wesee it in all its undisguised pettiness when our minds areintroverted upon it. It takes the freshness even out ofworship. It throws a sickly glare over devout practices, whichought to lie in the quiet unobtrusive sunshine ofdisinterested love. It is not easy to keep the line always clearlydrawn between habitual examination of conscience and themisery of self-contemplation. Yet without examination ofconscience we are lost, while self-contemplation is an odiousleprosy of the soul. Down in the caverns of self the air isclose, and all things are damp, mouldy, and decaying. Asoul turned inward upon itself is mostly mildewed. I do notwonder that intellectual men, men of robust character, menof successful activity, and men of energetic physical health,have such a mingled horror and contempt of what is calledthe spiritual life. Nevertheless everything is right in its ownplace. Patients are better in a hospital than on the top of


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Ben Nevis. Fresh air, bright summits, dashing waters,aromatic pines, dewy fern, and crisp heather, belong to thenext world of spirituality, not to this one. It is foolish to beimpatient. If there is a self-hatred which is wise, there isalso a self-hatred which is either stupidity or conceit. A manis a coxcomb who cannot be patient with himself. If he breaksaway from the undignified bondage of a pious life, will he inreality escape from himself? Or if he keeps to outwarddevotion, and studiously refuses to cultivate an interior spiritbecause of its sickliness and liability to delusion, will nothis little spites, his airs, his self-importance, his tinyprejudices, his threadbare peculiarities, his unimposingfretfulness, his girlish jealousy, his ungraceful aptness totake offence, his love of nice cookery, his anxiety about hishealth, his reference to his age and his past, — will not allthese pusillanimities, which will be his masters then, besicklier far than the meanness of a craven scruple, the jargonof pedantic prayer, and the stifling atmosphere of a self-introverted spirit, the boisterousness of an inelegantasceticism, or the censoriousness of a man who has mortifiedhimself into bitterness, because his grace has not beenpotent enough to overcome the incapacity for sweetnesswhich belongs to his natural character? We may dependupon it that all men, who have an instinctive aversion forthe spiritual life, are doing more of the devil’s work thanthey suppose. It is fortunate that they are mostlyunsuccessful men.

Why have I said all this? Because we are now going tostudy the remedies of self-deceit, and I am anxious to keepdown your expectations. We shall find nothing so completeor so specific or so definite, as we should desire. Self-deceitis a bad business. I was once entrapped into printing thatthere was nothing in the spiritual life which was irreparable.Half a dozen times self-deceit has driven me to the veryedge of changing my mind. But I believe I was right and Istill keep it. We will settle therefore that self-deceit is certainly


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reparable. Now, as to the spiritual treatment for it, you maythink of that, as indeed of the spiritual life altogether, as anecessary evil, if you choose. This puts it low enough, yetleaves it indispensable; and when a thing which regardsour relation to God is indispensable, the sooner we set towork, and the more cheerfully we work, the better, even forour interested selves. In this temper then let us look at theremedies of self-deceit. If there is nothing to satisfy greatexpectations, there is a good deal to cheer. As we sink deeperstill and deeper in the knowledge of our own falsehood, wecome nearer and nearer to the grand truthfulness of God;and somehow self-abasement gives us heart. Strange itshould be so; yet so it is.

Something then may be said, first of all of a generalcharacter, and then secondly with a more special application.We may say generally that the knowledge of our own self-deceit is the nearest approach to its cure; and this is myreason for having dwelt at such length upon it. What is soversatile and individual has to be met in such a variety ofways, that, when we once see our self-deceit, the occasionand the circumstances will suggest the weapons with whichwe had best fight it. It does not like to be known. It affectsdisguise. It flourishes in concealment. When it is seen, asense of guilt makes it tremble. It loses its head when astrong light is turned upon it, and makes an involuntarygesture, against which at other times it is on its guard. Thusthe mere knowledge of our self-deceit not only enables us todirect our aim at it, but also renders it a much less formidableenemy by making it a coward.

Then, again, general simplicity of life is an antagonisticpower to self-deceit. Every additional degree of simplicity,which there is in our conduct, weakens the influence ofself-deceit, diminishes its force, and subtracts its occasions.Simplicity is in the spiritual world what light is in the naturalworld. We cannot have a better idea of it than that whichlight gives us. The energy of light is such that scarcely


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anything can be exposed to it, for a few moments even,without some change taking place in it. Both animal lifeand vegetable life languish, if they are deprived of light. Thereare certainly endless reasons for being simple, and many ofthem extremely cogent; but there are few more cogent, thanthe reflection that all simplicity is a general unfitness forself-deceit. Its constitution has something in it peculiarlyuncongenial to that disease.

When a man makes a series of discoveries, and suchdiscoveries generally do come in a series, that he is the victimof continual self-deceit, and that what he valued as theprincipal basis of his inward life has been neither more norless than a delusion, it will often be his wisest policy toremould his spiritual system, and cast it into some oneconcentrated practice; and the practice most suited to hiscase will be that of making acts of purity of intention, tryingto render his pious intention actual, instead of virtual orhabitual. But this remedy, of concentrating the whole powerof the soul on purity of intention exclusively, cannot beindiscriminately recommended to all. It will do more harmthan good to those who are scrupulous: and if few arescrupulous naturally, many are made so by the indiscretionsof direction; so that, by fault or by misfortune, no slightproportion of pious persons are partially scrupulous. Butthose, with whom the remedy agrees, will find it almost aspecific. Those, whom it makes unhappy, it does not suit.There is no serving God in unhappiness, when theunhappiness is of our own making. Let us serve God in thesunshine, while He makes the sun shine. We shall thenserve Him all the better in the dark, when He sends thedarkness. It is sure to come. But meanwhile false darknessis worse than false light. It is more deceiving, peopled withphantoms, rife with delusions. So, if seeking to make ourintentions for God’s glory always actual, entangles ourconduct instead of simplifying it, if it darkens our spiritinstead of illuminating it, we may be sure it is not the right


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road for us, though it is right in itself, and right for so manyothers.

We must not seek to combat self-deceit by means of anexcessive examination of conscience and a perpetual uneasyprobing of our motives in all our actions. To keep undoing awound, to see if it is healing, is an obvious folly. All thingsin the spiritual life should be taken quietly. Even our fallsmust be taken quietly. A diver can only remain a very limitedtime in the depths of the sea, and even then he often comesup with the blood gushing from his mouth and ears. So is itwith us down in the depths of our own motives. We mustnot stay there long. If we cannot find what we want therequickly, it is better to come up quickly, without having foundit. We can often effect more by looking up to heaven than bygoing down under water. An earnest man is under a greattemptation to rummage himself thoroughly, when somethinghas gone wrong, especially when he has detected himself ina spiritual dishonesty.

We must also remember that this cure of self-deceit isnot a thing which can be done once for all, and then beover. It is a lifelong work. It is important to remember this,because we naturally go to work differently upon what isoccasional and temporary, and upon what is a normal partof our daily lives. It is also a process to the success of whichdiscouragement is peculiarly fatal. The longer an effort hasto last, the less it will bear discouragement. What ispersevering requires the vehemence of an impulse. A longlength of wire droops and is slack, as you may see daily bythe sides of the railways. So it is with perseverance. It mustrest on posts. We cannot hang weights to it; its own weightis as much as it can carry. It will deserve praise if it carriesthat well. But, besides this, the nature of our warfare withself-deceit, and the character of the enemy we are fighting,both invest discouragement with a particular danger. It ishope which keeps faith’s eye clear and steady. Now the tacticsof self-deceit are to harass our hope. Entanglement,


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complication, indistinctness, stratagem, multiplicity ofattack, and an habitually versatile neglect of the expectedlaws of war, tend to wear out our hope; and if we once sitdown and despair, the chances are very much against ourever being allowed to get up again.

Moreover we must not be proud. There are battles inwhich it is not very honorable to be victor, because we arelowered by having to fight them at all, as when soldierscharge a mob in the streets. There are battles also in whichthe conquerors come out draggled and disfigured, as whenmen fight their way through marsh. So in our warfare withself-deceit we must not look for glory. We shall never marchinto any of the moral cities we may conquer, with the sunshining on our clean scarlet and glittering gold, and on ourunsoiled banner flapping like slow flashes of lightning inthe bright beams, with our trumpets braying wildly in thehoarse accents of triumph. We shall always go homedraggled. We must also, for this is another characteristic ofour warfare, show extreme patience and good-humoredcontentment, with little victories and modest successes. Wemust often think a drawn battle as good as a victory.

Meditation on the attributes of God is another defenseagainst self-deceit. The likeness of God is the aim of holiness,and we unconsciously imitate that which is a frequentsubject of our meditation. But there is something more thanthis. The creator’s image is on the creature’s soul. It has tobe revived and refreshed rather than engraven anew; andwhen we reverently put God before ourselves in detail andfor a long time together, there is a sympathy in our soulwhich draws out, clears, defines, and sharpens His imagewithin us. Then, moreover, God is truth. All His perfectionshave the character of truth upon them and the atmosphereof truth around them. The neighborhood of God is the nativeland of truth. Moreover everything, which leads us to throwourselves out of ourselves, and upon the objects of faith, isin itself a remedy against self-deceit; and what can win us


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from self-contemplation more effectually, than that earthlybeatific vision, the prospect of the attributes of God?Reverence too is unfavorable to self-deceit, and meditationon the Divine Perfections is a perennial source of holy fearand self-abasing adoration. It is to be remarked also, and acurious remark it is, that reverence towards God makesmen natural and simple towards each other. There is amodest yet unabashed naturalness of manner, whichoccasionally distinguishes spiritual persons, into whatevercompany they are thrown. At first we hardly notice it, as itis the gift of naturalness not to be noticed. Then it strikesus, then grows upon us, and ends by exercising a sort offascination over us. We shall generally find that the devotionof such men is marked by a forcible attraction towards theAttributes of God. A man will hardly ever be awkward inpublic, who in secret habitually pays reverent court to God.Habitual reverence is the high breeding of the spiritual life.

We must endeavour to walk purely by faith. Everythingabout our devotion should be as inward as is discreetlypossible. We must not go by what chance advisers tell us,or by what some saintly religious is reported to have said ofus, or by what some one is considered to have hinted aboutour guidance. We must not let the habit of looking foroutward providential tokens master us overmuch. The light,the road, the circumstances, the temper, of faith — here isour safety; and, what is more, here also is our perfection.We must remember too that censoriousness, bad enoughalways and anywhere, has a peculiarly injurious effect uponthe soul, when it is in actual conflict with self-deceit. Indeed,as a rule, all excess in talking, even when it is not about ourown spiritual life or the characters of others, may be regardedas a power of self-deceit. The tongue has nearly as much todo with lies of thought as with lies of speech.

But above all things let us beware of one grand error.It is that of thinking, from the delusions and entanglementsof the spiritual life, that God is as it were insidious, that He


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beguiles us into committing ourselves, and then stands byHis bargain regardless of our infirmity. There is often anappearance of this in some of the complicated situations inwhich an almost inevitable self-deceit has placed us.Sometimes there comes a complication in the spiritual life,which looks like the end of the world, so hopeless is it. Itmay even affect our outward life, if we are placed in chargesof great responsibility. It looks like the end of the world; oris it a possibility of madness? Self-deceit is in some way orother concerned with it, we may be sure. We must thereforecultivate confidence in God as a most special remedy. Wemust cultivate it as a habit of mind, as well as an emotionof the heart. God never wishes to entrap us, or take us at adisadvantage.

What then will make us real? The Face of God will doit. The first kingly touch of eternity will not only wake us,but it will heal us also. Self-deceit is the king’s evil of thesoul, and the Sovereign’s hand alone can cure it.

Clearly, then, the nearest approach to this which ispossible on earth will be our best defense against self-deceit;and the nearest approach to it is the serving God out ofpersonal love. Love, not all love, but divine love has aspecialty to make us real. Communion with God eats awayour unreality. We catch simplicity as part of the likeness ofJesus; and it is His likeness which love fastens on. Whenwe look out of ourselves in loving faith, our inward processesare fewer in number, and amazingly simplified. But theirmajesty is only enhanced by their simplicity. When ourinterior life is reduced to a single operation of grace, it isthen that we are safest. When many things are going on inus at once, there is little growth, and much self-deceiving.We must look out to God, pass over to Him, lean upon Him,learn to be one with Him, and let love of Him burn love ofself away, so that our union may be effected. Out of God allis unreal. Away from God all is untrue. Untruthfulness isthe condition of the creature. How painfully we feel, when


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we are at our best estate, and even better people thanourselves when they are at their best estate, that we arehelplessly pretentious, indeliberate unrealities, unintentionalhypocrisies! It is a sober cheer, that the time will come to allof us, when we shall play parts no more, neither with others,nor with ourselves, nor yet with God.

Last update: 11/06/03

Faber Self-Deceit-A Comedy on Lies

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Transcript of Faber Self-Deceit-A Comedy on Lies