Multitudes of men who are as forward at first as Pliable and Temporary were turn out at last to have no root in themselves; but here and there you will discover a man who is all root together.  There are some men whose whole mind and heart and will, whose whole inward man, has gone to root.  All the strength and all the fatness of their religious life retreat into its root.  They have no leaves at all, and they have too little fruit as yet; but you should see their roots.  Only, no eye but the eye of God can see sorrow for sin—­secret and sore humiliation on account of secret sin—­the incessant agony that goes on within between the flesh and the spirit, between sin and grace, between very hell and heaven itself.  To know your own evil hearts, my brethren, say to you on that subject what any Temporary will, is the very root of the whole matter to you.  Whatever Dr. Newman’s mistakes as to outward churches may have been, he was a master of the human heart, the most difficult of all matters to master.  Listen, then, to what he says on the matter now in hand.  “Now, unless we have some just idea of our hearts and of sin, we can have no right idea of a Moral Governor, a Saviour, or a Sanctifier; that is, in professing to believe in them we shall be using words without attaching any distinct meaning to them.  Thus self-knowledge is at the root of all real religious knowledge; and it is vain,—­it is worse than vain,—­it is a deceit and a mischief, to think to understand the Christian doctrines as a matter of course, merely by being taught by books, or by attending sermons, or by any outward means, however excellent, taken by themselves.  For it is in proportion as we search our hearts and understand our own nature that we understand what is meant by an Infinite Governor and Judge; it is in proportion as we comprehend the nature of disobedience and our actual sinfulness that we feel what is the blessing of the removal of sin, redemption, pardon, sanctification, which otherwise are mere words.  God speaks to us primarily in our hearts.  Self-knowledge is the key to the precepts and doctrines of Scripture.  The very utmost that any outward notices of religion can do is to startle us and make us turn inward and search our hearts; and then, when we have experienced what it is to read ourselves, we shall profit by the doctrine of the Church and the Bible.”  My brethren, the temper in which you receive that passage, and receive it from its author, may be safely taken by you as a sure presage whether you are to turn out a Temporary and a Castaway or no.

Now, to conclude with a word of admission, and, bound up with it, a word of encouragement.  After all that has been said, I fully admit that we are all Temporaries to begin with.  We all cool down from our first heat in religion.  We all halt from our first spurt.  We all turn back from faith and from duty and from privilege through our fear of men, or through our corrupt love of ourselves, or