at when anything
happens to disturb or break up their earthly home their rootless
religiosity goes with it. Other men's religion, again, and all their
interest in it, is rooted in their shop; you can make them anything or
nothing in religion, according as you do or do not do business in their
shop. Companionship, also, accounts for the fluctuations of many men's,
and almost all women's, religious lives. If they happen to fall in with
godly lovers and friends, they are sincerely godly with them; but if
their companions are indifferent or hostile to true religion, they
gradually fall into the same temper and attitude. We sometimes see
students destined for the Christian ministry also with all their religion
so without root in themselves that a session in an unsympathetic class, a
sceptical book, sometimes just a sneer or a scoff, will wither all the
promise of their coming service. And so on through the whole of human
life. He that hath not the root of the matter in himself dureth for a
while, but by and by, for one reason or another, he is sure to be
offended.

So much, then,--not enough, nor good enough--for our Lord's swift stroke
at the heart of His hearers. But let us now pass on to Pliable, as he so
soon and so completely discovers himself to us under John Bunyan's so
skilful hand. Look well at our author's speaking portrait of a
well-known man in Bedford who had no root in himself, and who, as a
consequence, was pliable to any influence, good or bad, that happened to
come across him. 'Don't revile,' are the first words that come from
Pliable's lips, and they are not unpromising words. Pliable is hurt with
Obstinate's coarse abuse of the Christian life, till he is downright
ashamed to be seen in his company. Pliable, at least, is a gentleman
compared with Obstinate, and his gentlemanly feelings and his good
manners make him at once take sides with Christian. Obstinate's foul
tongue has almost made Pliable a Christian. And this finely-conceived
scene on the plain outside the city gate is enacted over again every day
among ourselves. Where men are in dead earnest about religion it always
arouses the bad passions of bad men; and where earnest preachers and
devoted workers are assailed with violence or with bad language, there is
always enough love of fair play in the bystanders to compel them to take
sides, for the time at least, with those who suffer for the truth. And
we are sometimes too apt to count