Christ by the Gospel."

As we listen to the conversation that goes on between the two old
pilgrims and this smartly appointed youth, we find them striving hard,
but without any sign of success, to convince him of some of the things
from which he gets his somewhat severe name. For one thing, they at last
bluntly told him that he evidently did not know the very A B C about
himself. Till, when too hard pressed by the more ruthless of the two old
men, the exasperated youth at last frankly burst out: "I will never
believe that my heart is thus bad!" There is a warm touch of Bunyan's
own experience here, mixed up with his so dramatic development of Paul's
morsels of autobiography that he lets drop in his Epistles to the
Philippians and to the Galatians. "Now was I become godly; now I was
become a right honest man. Though as yet I was nothing but a poor
painted hypocrite, yet I was proud of my godliness. I read my Bible, but
as for Paul's Epistles, and such like Scriptures, I could not away with
them; being, as yet, but ignorant both of the corruptions of my nature
and of the want and worth of Jesus Christ to save me. The new birth did
never enter my mind, neither knew I the deceitfulness and treachery of my
own wicked heart. And as for secret thoughts, I took no notice of them."
My brethren, old and young, what do you think of all that? What have you
to say to all that? Does all that not open a window and let a flood of
daylight into your own breast? I am sure it does. That is the best
portrait of you that ever was painted. Do you not see yourself there as
in a glass? And do you not turn with disgust and loathing from the
stupid and foolish face? You complain and tell stories about how
impostors and cheats and liars have come to your door and have impudently
thrust themselves into your innermost rooms; but your own heart, if you
only knew it, is deceitful far above them all. Not the human heart as it
stands in confessions, and in catechisms, and in deep religious books,