reth for a while. In Hopeful's words, his mind and will
were never changed with all his joy, only his passing moods and his
momentary emotions.

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 ours