Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE SECOND MAN VERIFIED IN HISTORY.149was not the bare gospel, but the " gospel of thekingdom/'30 which was to be proclaimed to allnations. It was not a naked intellectual truth ofich they were the bearers, but a kingdom whthey were to build. They were ncing a sect of philosophy, but founding an empThey were a King's heralds, and every king has arealm. Thus the Kingdom of the Word was proclaimedby the word spoken through many voices,but as the outpouring of one Spirit given on theday of Pentecost. This whole body of their teaching,therefore, was one Tradition ; that is, a deliveryover of the truth to them by inspiration ofthe Spirit, as the Truth who had become incarnatetaught it, and a delivery of this truth from themto the communities which they set up. The firstcommunication of the Christian faith to the individualwas never made by writing. How, said theApostle, should they invoke one whom they didnot believe, but how believe in one of whom theyhad not heard, and how hear without a preacher,and how preach except they were sent ?31 It didnot occur to him to ask how should they believein one of whom they had not read. On the contrary,he gives in these few words the whole orderof the truth's transmission. He conceived notheralds without a commission, any more than faithwithout trust in the word of the heralds. Buthere is the great sending, at and from the day30 Matt, xxiv, H. 31 Rom. x. 15,