Another part of the ecclesiastical tradition was the announcing to men the words and the acts of Christ. The Christian character was to be formed upon the living example of the Shepherd who had gone before His sheep. For this task men were chosen who had been with Him during the whole time of His ministry. So long as they were on earth they would speak with all the authority of those who had seen what they witnessed; but it is not apparent how an accurate account of our Lord's words and acts could be transmitted to succeeding generations except by writing. Thus it pleased the Holy Spirit to inspire some of the Apostles and some of their disciples to commit to writing that record of our Lord's words and actions which we possess in the four Gospels. Inexpressibly dear, indeed, and precious to every Christian, must be the words of the Word; like nothing else upon earth, the sounds which came from the lips of God manifest in the flesh; of untold depth His utterances; of inexhaustible fruitfulness His teaching. And the same may be said of His acts. As a single parable would disclose the nature of His kingdom, so a single act might be rich in endless application to the history of His Church and to the heart of every believer. This most precious part of the ecclesiastical tradition the Evangelists deposited in the bosom of the Church, to be communicated, guarded, interpreted by her for ever to the end of time. It was not the creation of one power to balance another, for a book and a society do not come into competition; it was endowing the society which Christ had created with the breath of His mouth, and investing it with a permanent knowledge of His words and acts—a knowledge to be transmitted under its keeping to all times. As the Gospels contained words and acts of our Lord, so the Apostolic Epistles contained comments, illustrations, and developments of their personal teaching, bearing witness everywhere to that teaching, and to the society which their own labours had constructed under their Lord's direction, and only by the power of His Spirit working in themselves who preached, and in the hearers who accepted the faith which they preached. These writings the Church collected and placed in her treasury; they became part of that deposit which St. Irenæus[143] celebrates "as being new and fresh in an excellent vessel, and giving perpetual youth to that vessel, which is the divine office intrusted to the Church, as life is given to the body to vivify all the limbs belonging to it."