t Bishops of Rome, all
supporting the Papal claims as known in the Middle Ages. The collection
was afterwards increased, and in the middle of the twelfth century
engrafted into Gratian's _Decretum_, on which is based the Canon Law of
the Roman Church. These documents are undoubtedly fabrications long
after date.

If we revise the opinion of our Redeemer on this conspicuous point of
His teaching, where shall we securely pause? Certainly we cannot
_securely_ trust, as oracular and final, His own predictions of things
still future, at least in their details.

HE HAS AFFIRMED IT FROM ABOVE.

One great utterance is often quoted as a confession that His conscious
knowledge had limits; Mark xiii. 32. Quite true; but what sort of
confession is it? It indicates in its very terms the vastness of His
supernatural knowledge; asserting His cognizance of the fact that _the
angels in heaven did not know_ that day and hour. Such an avowal of
nescience is an implicit assertion of an immeasurable insight.

And has He not, _as the glorified Christ_, thrown a light of affirmation
on the "opinions" of the days of His flesh? The glorified Christ sent
down the Paraclete. And the first and abiding work of the Paraclete was
to illuminate the Apostles with a new understanding of the truth and
glory of the Old Scriptures, altogether in the lines of their crucified
Master's teaching about them. Unless indeed Resurrection, and Ascension,
and Pentecost are themselves to melt into the haze of myth! The New
Testament is as full of the supernatural as the Old.

Reverently and humbly, and with full recognition of a large place and
lawful work for a true higher criticism in the literature of the Old
Testament, and of the New, I yet decline to think that our Lord's
estimate of the nature of the Bible is not to be final for me, and that
His reasonings from it are to be revised, while yet I adore Him as my
Light, my Life, and my God. And I ask my Brethren to pause many times,
and on their knees, before they think otherwise.

PRESENT FULFILMENTS OF PROPHECY.

As regards prediction, let them look around them. Two great fulfilments
of Old Testament prediction are going forward at this moment. One is,
the vast work of missions, whose whole aim is to make known "to the ends
of the earth" the Name of Messiah, Son of David, Son of Abraham, Son of
God. The other is, the dispersion and yet permanence of the Jewish race,
and (may I not add, in view of the fac