Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE SECOND MAN VERIFIED IN HISTORY. 159forces on which a universe can be built, theFather's Word, and the world's Creator, and theChurch's Head. Parable and apophthegm andanswer, metaphor and plain speech, when used byHim, are all impregnated with this power. Andnow that we possess this peculiar language of theWord Incarnate, embodied and fixed for ever toour senses as well as our affections, it seems asif we could not have done without it. Then themode in which His own Apostles apply and illustrateHis doctrines, and exhibit to us the formationof the society which He came to institute,possesses a value only subordinate to His ownwords. The written word, it has been said,39 givesto the whole Church through all times a sense ofthe truth and consistency of her teaching like thatwhich the sense of personal identity gives to theindividual respecting his own being. And again,what memory is to the single man, such is thewhole tradition of the Truth in the bosom of theChurch. But it is throughothe unwritten teachingodeposited in her by the Apostles that she possessesthe key to the true understanding of that which, iswritten. The one in her practice has never beensevered from the other. So dear has the writtenword been to her that almost the blackest epithetin language, & ' traitor' / is derived from the namewhich she gave to those who, under fear of persecution,surrendered to the heathen her sacred39 By Mohler.