"Ye need not that any man teach you." (1 Jno. 2:27.)

In a day when growing confusion is on every side, and more and more a darkness that may be felt is falling upon men, how strange to the unbelief even of believers, how cheerily to faith, the apostle's words ring out. Scripture, at least, now that the light of Christ has dawned, knows no "authority of darkness" (Col. 1:13, Greek.) for the disciple of Christ. It does not philosophize-not " seek after wisdom," but present it; and the "unction from the holy One"-the anointing of the Spirit, where indeed received, sets free from dependence upon all human teachers.

Of this, however, we need continual reminding, as the apostle here in fact reminds Christians. The evident helpless, hopeless confusion into which God has allowed all that could pretend to human authority to fall, is not enough to deliver them from again and again, and under various pretexts, seeking some standard of truth other than the simple Word of God itself. Yea, in the minds of many this confusion unsettles souls rather in the practical infallibility of the Spirit of God as a Teacher, because "good men so disagree," and makes them cling the more to "opinions," which seem to stand as good a chance as others of being right. From the dogmas of creeds, fast losing now their hold, men flee to the relief of an uncertainty equally dogmatic, and which will at least not add to the troubles of the present the troubles of a more or less problematical future. It is a downward path this, leading through many "phases of faith" (or of unbelief), into utter skepticism; and the masses are, alas! fast traversing it toward an " apostasy " which Scripture surely predicts (2 Thess. 2:), and from which alone it renders escape possible.

O for a voice that might arrest these wanderers -that might say to souls feeling in any measure the desolation of this darkness, There is yet hope in God! But my object is now to urge the admonition of the apostle upon the Lord's people themselves; and, in whatever position we may be, it is not unneeded. If Christ has given teachers, he who makes light of them makes light of the gift of Christ; but on the other hand, the danger for most lies rather in the tendency which the apostle's words warn against in so consolatory a manner. How blessed and inspiriting to be brought face to face with the fact of our possession of a completed volume of revelation able to furnish thoroughly unto all good works, and of a Teacher infallible and divine, to give us that Word in its fullness and power!

" But we are not infallible. How shall we preserve for ourselves the blessedness of an infallible Teacher, in such a way as to consist with the recognition of our own fallibility?"

Certainty is very distinct from infallibility. The latter, indeed, we never can pretend to:the former we ought to have, and without limit also wherever God has spoken. We are responsible, with Scripture in our hands, to possess ourselves of what it says upon any question that may be before us as needing answer. Otherwise, if the truth govern my walk, this last will be vacillating and uncertain, my conscience uneasy, and my heart distressed, in proportion to the cloud which is upon my understanding. It is all well to be humble, and to own the imperfection of my knowledge ; but if the truth make any demand upon me, how shall I answer to it if I am uncertain that it is truth ? and if God has spoken, and spoken for me to hear, how shall I excuse myself for having not heard?

Thus the duty of obedience shuts me up to the blessed necessity of certain knowledge. The true humility is to listen to what God has spoken, and not to impute folly to His wisdom, by supposing that He has spoken with so little clearness as to be practically unintelligible, or insists upon knowledge where He has taken from me the means of knowledge.

Now, what does the apostle mean by the assertion before us? Not, certainly, that God does not teach by teachers:He surely does; but that however much He uses these, He so teaches, Himself, that the soul can set to its seal that God is true. It is God's Word whose entrance has given light, and the hand used to bring in the light adds positively nothing whatever to the authority of the light. But who does not see, then, the immense danger, such as (alas!) we are, of a mistake in a matter so really simple? Who (one would think) could be guilty of so stupendous a folly? Who, on the other hand, in fact, has not fallen into it ? It may be-how easily!-that while in the first place it was the truth that commended the teacher to my soul, it has become thus, through my perversity, that now the teacher, on the contrary, commends the truth. The teacher established to me as that (and rightly), by what through him God has made known to me, I sit down to learn from him, second hand, what may be by him received on divine authority, but is by me on human; and which therefore will not be living truth at least for me,-may be, so far as I know, error!

If all that we have thus received from man merely were blotted out of our minds, and nothing left there but what had been graven ineradicably by the hand of God Himself, what gaps might there not be in our knowledge! and yet that would give us the measure of our true knowledge.

The clashing of interpreters of the Word,-the differences that obtain even among those most truly and deeply taught,-humbling as they are, and ought to be, to us, does not God use them sovereignly to avert a still worse evil, and make it a necessity to judge, whether we will or not, between discordant interpretations? and does He not, again and again, bring out of His Word new truths or aspects of truth which may seem or be conflict with somewhat hitherto received as in truth, that it may test us whether we can receive upon the authority of His Word alone, apart from all human authority?

Every movement among men perhaps, that we recognize as from God, has been characterized by the fresh presentation of some truth in this way, which had to make its way through more or less opposition from the mass of Christians themselves. Having conquered this, and established a recognized place for itself; and got a following, within a generation or so it crystallized into a creed, and was no more a living thing. Teachers who themselves, with more or less clearness, yet followed the Word, became in turn the oracles that men followed; and God had to raise up another testimony. History thus repeats itself; for we are the same, and not better than our fathers. Alas! our abuse of His gifts compels the faithfulness of God to deal thus with us. And now at last, every thing that we have is challenged and in question. The old lines are being fast obliterated. The routine of old-fashioned conventionalism is being rudely broken up. Not orthodoxy, but living faith alone, can abide. The Word of God, blessed be His name, was never before so realizing itself as that; Christ Himself never before so manifesting Himself; the Spirit of God never more glorifying Him than now. But withal, never was there more need of a faith that can with the disciple of old leave both the boat and the company of the other disciples, as it says' to Him who is thus revealed to it, " Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters."