"There shall be false teachers among you

and many shall follow their pernicious.

and practice established by the labours of the apostles in the first century, is recognised by men of very different ways of thinking. The unbeliever asserts it without fear; the church partizan admits it without shame, and all sorts of middle men are of. opinion that it would be a misfortune were it otherwise. The unbeliever, while himself rejoicing in the fact, uses it as a reproach to those who profess to follow the apostles whom he openly rejects; the churchman, while owning the apostles as the foundation, regards it as the inevitable result of the spiritual prerogative vested in "the church," that there should be further unfoldings of light and truth leading away from the primitive form of things; and the moderate and indifferent class accept it as a necessary and welcome result of the advance of the times, with which they think the original

apostolic institution has become inconsistent.

Is there not another meaning to the fact? To such as have confidence in the Bible as a divine record, the quotations standing at the head of this page must suggest a view of the present state of things very different from that entertained by the common run of religious professors. Do not these quotations require us to believe that it was in the apostolic foresight (a foresight imparted to them by that presence of the Holy Spirit which Jesus before his departure promised he would secure for them during his absence -Jno. xiv. 17; xvi. 13)—that the time coming was a time of departure from what they preachedwhen men indulging in "fables and walking in “ pernicious ways,' would wholly turn aside from the saving institutions of the gospel delivered by them, and realise the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy as to the state of things upon earth just