$3.$ The case of Interpretation has not yet been fully set before the reader. Hitherto, we have merely traced the problem back to the fountain-head, and dealt with it simply as _a Scriptural question_. We have shewn what light is thrown upon _Interpretation_ by the volume of _Inspiration_. The subject has been treated in the same way in the Vth and VIth of my Sermons. But it will not be improper, in this place,--it is even indispensable,--to develope the problem a little more fully; and to explain that it is of much larger extent. Now, there is a family resemblance in the method of all ancient expositions of Holy Scripture which vindicates for them, however remotely, a common origin. There is a resemblance in the general way of handling the Inspired Word which can only be satisfactorily explained by supposing that the remote type of all was the oral teaching of the Apostles themselves. In truth, is it credible that the early Christians would have been so forgetful of the discourses of the men who had seen the LORD, that no trace of it,--no tradition of so much as _the manner_ of it,--should have lingered on for a hundred years after the death of the last of the Apostles; down to the time when Origen, for example, was a young man?... It cannot possibly be! (i.) "The things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses," (writes the great Apostle to his son Timothy,) "the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also[192]." Provision is thus made by the aged Saint,--_in the last of his Epistles_,--for the transmission of his inspired teaching[193] to a second and a third generation. Now the words just quoted were written about the year 65, at which time Timothy was a young man. Unless we suppose that ALMIGHTY GOD curtailed the lives of the chief depositaries of His Word, Timothy will have lived on till A.D. 100; so that "faithful men" who died in the middle of the next century might have been trained and taught by him for many years. It follows, that the "faithful men" last spoken of will have been "able to teach others also," whose writings (if they wrote at all) would range from A.D. 190 to A.D. 210. Now, just such a writer is Hippolytus,--who is known to have been taught by that "faithful man" Irenæus[194],--to whom, as it happens, the deposit was "committed" by Polycarp,--who stood to St. John in the self-same relation as Timothy to St. Paul!