And where this first and best of all wisdom is not, there, in our Lord's
words, there is no deepness of earth, no root, and no fruit. And any
religion that most men have is of this outside, shallow, rootless
description. This was all the religion that poor Pliable ever had. This
poor creature had a certain slight root of something that looked like
religion for a short season, but even that slight root was all outside of
himself. His root, what he had of a root, was all in Christian's
companionship and impassioned appeals, and then in those impressive
passages of Scripture that Christian read to him. At your first
attention to these things you would think that no possible root could be
better planted than in the Bible and in earnest preaching. But even the
Bible, and, much more, the best preaching, is all really outside of a man
till true religion once gets its piercing roots down into himself. We
have perhaps all heard of men, and men of no small eminence, who were
brought up to believe the teaching of the Bible and the pulpit, but who,
when some of their inherited and external ideas about some things
connected with the Bible began to be shaken, straightway felt as if all
the grounds of their faith were shaken, and all the roots of their faith
pulled up. But where that happened, all that was because such men's
religion was all rooted outside of themselves; in the best things outside
of themselves, indeed, but because, in our Lord's words, their religion
was rooted in something outside of themselves and not inside, they were
by and by offended, and threw off their faith. There is another well-
known class of men all whose religion is rooted in their church, and in
their church not as a member of the body of Christ, but as a social
institution set up in this world. They believe in their church. They
worship their church. They suffer and make sacrifices for their church.
They are proud of the size and the income of their church; her past
contendings and sufferings, and present dangers, all endear their church
to their heart. But if tribulation and persecution arise, that is to