infallible Teacher visible here at our sides, it is a great deal
better for us that we have not, and it is a step in advance that He
has gone away. Many eager and honest Christian souls, hungering after
certainty and rest, have cast themselves in these latter days into
the arms of an infallible Church. I doubt whether any such
questioning mind has found what it sought; and I am sure that it has
taken a step downwards, in passing from the spiritual guidance
realised by our own honest industry and earnest use of the materials
supplied to us in Christ's word, to any external authority which
comes to us to save us the trouble of thinking, and to confirm to us
truth which we have not made our own by search and effort. We gain by
losing the visible Christ; and He was proclaiming progress and not
retrogression, when He said: 'In that day ye shall ask Me no more
questions.'

For what have we instead? We have two things: a completed revelation,
and an inward Teacher.

We have a completed revelation. Great and wonderful and unspeakably
precious as were and are the words of Jesus Christ, His deeds are far
more. The death of Christ has told us things that Christ before His
death could not tell. The resurrection of Christ has cast light upon
all the darkest places of man's destiny which Christ, before His
resurrection, could not by any words so illuminate. The ascension of
Christ has opened doors for thought, for faith, for hope, which were
fast closed, notwithstanding all His teachings, until He had burst
them asunder and passed to His throne. And the facts which are
substituted for the bodily presence of Jesus with His disciples tell
us a great deal more than they could ever have drawn from Him by
questionings, however persistent and however wisely directed. We have