Our Lord's short preliminary description of Pliable goes, like all His
descriptions, to the very bottom of the whole matter. Our Lord in this
passage is like one of those masterly artists who begin their portrait-
painting with the study of anatomy. All the great artists in this walk
build up their best portraits from the inside of their subjects. He hath
not root in himself, says our Lord, and we need no more than that to be
told us to foresee how all his outside religion will end. 'Without self-
knowledge,' says one of the greatest students of the human heart that
ever lived, 'you have no real root in yourselves. Real self-knowledge is
the root of all real religious knowledge. It is a deceit and a mischief
to think that the Christian doctrines can either be understood or aright
accepted by any outward means. It is just in proportion as we search our
own hearts and understand our own nature that we shall ever feel what a
blessing the removal of sin will be; redemption, pardon, sanctification,
are all otherwise mere words without meaning or power to us. God speaks
to us first in our own hearts.' Happily for us our Lord has annotated
His own text and has told us that an honest heart is the alone root of
all true religion. Honest, that is, with itself, and with God and man
about itself. As David says in his so honest psalm, 'Behold, Thou
desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part Thou shalt
make me to know wisdom.' And, indeed, all the preachers and writers in
Scripture, and all Scriptural preachers and writers outside of Scripture,
are at one in this: that all true wisdom begins at home, and that it all
begins at the heart. And they all teach us that he is the wisest of men
who has the worst opinion of his own heart, as he is the foolishest of
men who does not know his own heart to be the worst heart that ever any
man was cursed with in this world. 'Here is wisdom': not to know the
number of the beast, but to know his mark, and to read it written so
indelibly in our own heart.