I doubt if many could tell you what the sermon was about that day.
No other place offers to the speculative eye of the philosopher so many varied phases of humanity as the church.

In the open, during the week-days, there is little pretense, one way or the other; but in church, on Sunday, everybody, or nearly everybody, seems to have donned a mask, a transparent mask, a smug mask, the mask of the known hypocrite.

The man who is a brute to his wife goes meekly to his seat; the miser, who has six days pinched his tenants or evicted them, passes the collection plate, his face benevolent; the woman whose tongue is that of the liar and the gossip, who has done her best to smirch the reputation of her nearest neighbor, lifts her eyes heavenward and follows every word of a sermon she can not comprehend; and the man or woman who has stepped aside actually believes that his or her presence in church hoodwinks every one.

Heigh-ho! and envy with her brooding yellow eyes and hypocrisy with her eternal smirk sit side by side in church.
Oh, there are some good and kindly people in this ragged world of ours, and they go to church with prayer in their hearts and goodness on their lips and forgiveness in their hands.

They wear no masks; their hearts and minds go in and out of church unchanged.