He faces the shore, but he is pulling for the ship:

This is the way of those who row in boats, and also of a great many who never trust themselves on the water.

The boatman is all right, but the hypocrite is all wrong.

I cannot endure Mr. Facing-both-ways, yet he has swarms of cousins. It is ill to be a saint without and a devil within, to be a servant of Christ before the world in order to serve the ends of self and the devil, while inwardly the heart hates all good things. There are good and bad of all classes, and hypocrites can be found among ploughmen as well as among parsons.

Hypocrisy is the meanest vice a man can come to.

It is a base thing to call yourself Christ’s horse and yet carry the devil’s saddle. The worst kind of wolf is that which wears a sheep’s skin. Jezebel was never so ugly as when she had finished painting her face. Above all things, then, brother-laborers, let us be straight as an arrow, and true as a die, and never let us be time-servers, or turn-coats. Never let us carry two faces under one hat, nor blow hot and cold with the same breath.

—Charles H. Spurgeon
Adapted from John Ploughman’s Pictures

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