to pass through the experience known as conversion, obtain saving faith
and join the church. This is typical of a popular way of interpreting
the scriptures: First, determine what you wish them to mean and then
make them mean that. The purpose being to persuade people to join the
church, then by hook or crook that duty must be discovered in every
divine precept.

But this is simply to ignore the plain words of the great Teacher. It
would be impossible to clarify His statement: "If any man hears and
does the things I have been teaching he is like one who builds on a
rock." One thing marks the rock founded life, the doing of Christly
deeds. The course of conduct, the kind of character He has just
outlined in the sermon on the mount gives the established staple
character.

The enduring life is not built on dreams. Many people think that their
lives are rock founded because they have a nebulous admiration for the
moral teachings of Jesus. On the whole they admire the sermon on the
mount; having taken the trouble to say as much as this they sit back
with the comfortable feeling that they have set themselves right with
the universe, that the Almighty will be delighted with their
indorsement.

One of the most dangerous hypocrites is the easy-going, thoughtless
being who fancies that the indorsement of a duty is equivalent to the
doing of it. He evaporates his convictions into compliments instead of
crystallizing them into conduct. So far from being built on a rock he
floats around like a wisp of hay in a high wind. A butterfly might
better hope to drill and quarry out a foundation than he. Besides
this, his hypocritical praise of right precepts makes them only