their application is to another, are not necessarily truths followed when they apply to ourselves. Many need to be reminded of that word of Paul to his son Timothy, “Thou hast fully known my teaching, manner of life, purpose, faith,” &c. All was in harmony in that man of God, the teaching with the life, the purpose with the faith. All taught the same lesson; he did not build with one hand what he destroyed with the other; he had not preached to others what he had not followed out; his doctrine and his life were maintained in harmony to the end of his course; and he was able to say at the close of his life and ministry, “I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished my course.” To him it was Christ to live as well as to preach.
The principle of trusting in this verifying faculty tolerated, will not only affect the relations of the party to those outside their own narrow circle, but it will foster a spirit of hero-worship among themselves, in the supremacy assumed and allowed of a favored teacher or teachers, who will as a matter of fact be the instructor of the less instructed, in those things which their own judgment had not taught them, nor their own vision led them to see. The result will be that a state of necessary dependence on man for instruction in the things of God will be fallen into by the many, and fostered by the few, the very opposite of that which is the legitimate position of the child of God, to whom the apostle says, “We have an unction from the Holy one and we know all things”; a position, wherein the Babe in Christ is taught of God in all that He would bind upon his conscience. There is a sad self-deception in the thought, that the light of conscience often boasted in, is that of the individual himself as taught of God; that which is learnt in these matters is mostly not from the conscience of the individual himself as exercised before God, but from the domination of another, or the overruling influence of a party, which brings into its bondage those who ought to stand in the liberty of the sons of God, a liberty that calls no man master or teacher, and allows of no lording over the conscience of another.
It was said above that the small edge of the wedge has been allowed, but the more the teaching of those who are under the influence of this system is examined, the more plainly is it perceptible, that with strong attestations of adhesion to the Word, its life and power is too frequently lost, and a system of teaching has been advocated in which man is left to play fast and loose with the oracles of God, as a self-willed conscience may dictate. There is a deeper evil in all this than those accustomed to it are prepared to acknowledge or willing to see—an evil that is only awaiting the
