But, inheriting such a nature, and his inherited nature beginning to appear, then is the time when the true man really begins to be made.

The bad man dwells in contentment, and, indeed, by preference, at home in his own hard, proud, scornful, resentful heart; or, again, in his facile, fawning, tide-waiting, time- serving heart; and thus he chooses, accepts, and prefers his evil fate, and never seeks the help either of God or man to enable him to rise above it.

Paul was not, when we meet him first, the sweet, humble, affable, placable, makeable man that he made himself and came to be after a lifetime of gospel-preaching and of adorning the gospel he preached.

And all the assistances and all the opportunities that came to Paul are still coming to you and to me; till, whether naturally pliable and affectionate or the opposite, we at last shall come to the temperament, the complexion, and the exquisite sensibility of Paul himself.

Are you, then, a hard, stiff, severe, censorious, proud, angry, scornful man?
Or are you a too-easy, too-facile man-pleaser and self-seeker, being all things to all men that you may make use of all men?
Are you?
Then say so.