Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

158 THE SECOND MAN VERIFIED IN HISTORY.all the members. This is the indestructible frameworkwhich He has wrought for carrying on tomen His own teaching, until the whole mass growup to that fulness of the perfect stature which Hehas foreseen and determined.The second succession is that of the Truthitself committed to these men. For that plenitudeof teaching which the Apostles delivered orally tothe Church has never ceased to rest in her, andout of it she dispenses to all the ages her divinemessage. But part of this teaching by the furtherordering of the Spirit of Truth has been incorporatedin writing. And no one can doubt that thisincorporation has given a firmness and stability tothe teaching which we do not see how it couldotherwise have possessed. Thus the great Traditionof the Truth poured out upon the Churchhas been partly written and partly unwritten; notas if there were two teachings separable from eachther, but one and the same which runs in apetual blending. Through the written teachingwe receive the very words consecrated by ourLord's use : we have the priceless privilege ofknowing how He spoke ; of catching the accentsof His voice, and the look of His eyes, and thegestures of His body, portrayed in that narrative.The words of Him who spake as never man spakelive and sound for ever in our ears; and we recognisein the structure of His sentences, which conveyin a clause principles of endless application,