And any
religion that most men have is of this outside, shallow, rootless
description. This was all the religion that poor Pliable ever had. This
poor creature had a certain slight root of something that looked like
religion for a short season, but even that slight root was all outside of
himself. His root, what he had of a root, was all in Christian's
companionship and impassioned appeals, and then in those impressive
passages of Scripture that Christian read to him. At your first
attention to these things you would think that no possible root could be
better planted than in the Bible and in earnest preaching. But even the
Bible, and, much more, the best preaching, is all really outside of a man
till true religion once gets its piercing roots down into himself. We
have perhaps all heard of men, and men of no small eminence, who were
brought up to believe the teaching of the Bible and the pulpit, but who,
when some of their inherited and external ideas about some things
connected with the Bible began to be shaken, straightway felt as if all
the grounds of their faith were shaken, and all the roots of their faith
pulled up.
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