ome among the roots, not of actions only, but much more of convictions.
We may act honestly enough out of our present convictions and principles,
while, all the time, our convictions and our principles are vitiated at
bottom by the selfish ground they ultimately stand in. Let ministers,
then, to begin with, live deep down among the roots of their opinions and
their beliefs. Let them not only flee from being consciously insincere
and hypocritical men; let them keep their eye like the eye of God
continually on that deep ground of the soul where so many men unknown to
themselves deceive themselves. And, thus exercised, they shall be able
out of a deep and clean heart to rise far above that trimming and hedging
and self-seeking and self-sheltering in disputed and unpopular questions
which is such a temptation to all men, and is such a shame and scandal in
a minister.

Now, my good friends, we have kept all this time to the fourth shepherd
and to his noble name, but let us look in closing at some of his
sheep,--that is to say, at ourselves. For is it not said in the prophet:
Ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith
the Lord God. All, therefore, that has been said about the sincerity and
insincerity of ministers is to be said equally of their people also in
all their special and peculiar walks of life. Sincerity is as noble a
virtue, and insincerity is as detestable a vice, in a doctor, or a
lawyer, or a schoolmaster, or a merchant,--almost, if not altogether, as
much so as in a minister. Your insincerity and hypocrisy in your daily
intercourse with your friends and neighbours is a miserable enough state
of mind, but at the root of all that there lies your radical insincerity
toward God and your own soul. In his _Christian Perfection_ William Law
introduces his readers to a character called Julius, who goes regularly
to prayers, and there confesses himself to be a miserable sinner who has
no health in him; and yet that same Julius cannot bear to be informed of
any imperfection or suspected to be wanting in any kind or degree of
virtue. Now, Law asks, can there be a stronger proof that Julius is
wanting in the sincerity of his devotions? Is it not as plain as
anything can be that that man's confessions of sin are only words of
course, a certain civility of sacred speech in which his heart has not a
single atom of share? Julius confesses himself to be in great weakness,
corruption, disor