,
or by a long course of investigation; still less is it the relation
which a man would bear to a truth that he had learnt from others
originally, however much he had made it his own thereafter: but it is
that of one who is not a thinker, or a learner, or a reasoner, but who
is simply an attester, a witness. And so He stands before us, and says,
'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life.
Believe Me, and believe the words, for no other reason, primarily, than
because I speak them.' In these two respects, then, the matter and the
manner of His witness, He stands alone, and we have to bow before Him
and say, 'Speak, Lord! for thy servant heareth.' 'Before Pontius Pilate
He witnessed a good confession.'

II. We have here suggested to us the subordinate confessors who echo the
Lord's witness.

It is a matter of no consequence when, and before whom, this Timothy
professed his good profession. It may have been at his baptism. It may
have been when he was installed in his office. It may have been before
some tribunal of which we know nothing. That does not matter. The point
is that a Christian man is to be an echo of the Lord's good confession,
and is to keep within the lines of it, and to be sure that all of it is
echoed in his life. Christ has told us what to say, and we are here to
say it over again. Christ has witnessed; we are to confess. Our relation
to that truth is different from His. We hear it; He speaks it. We accept
it; He reveals it. We are influenced by it; He _is_ it. He brings it to
the world on His own authority; we are to carry it to the world on His.

Be sure that you Christian men are echoes of your Master. Be sure that
you reverberate the note that He struck. Be sure that all its music is
repeated by you And take care that you neither fall short of it, nor go
beyond it, in your faith and in your profession. Echoes of Christ--that
is the highest conception of a Christian life.

But though there is all the difference between the Witness and the
confessors, do not let us forget that, if we are truly Christian, there
is a very deep and blessed sense in which we, too, may witness what we
have seen and heard. A Christian preacher of any sort--and by that I
mean, not merely a man who stands in a pulpit, as I do, but all
Christian people, in their measure and degree--will do nothing by
professing the best profession, unless that profession sounds like the
utterance of a man who speaks tha