Suppose that you are going through a forest in company with others. You have lost your way. No one knows which way to go; dangers are around you—dangers from cold, hunger, wild beasts, enemies. If you go the wrong way, you may all perish; if you go the right way, you will reach your destination and be safe. Under these circumstances, one of the party climbs a tree, and when he has reached the top he cries out with joy, “I see the way we ought to go. We must go to the right. I see the ocean in that direction, and the spires of the city to which we are bound.” You all immediately go the way that he directs. He has become an authority to you. You follow his guidance implicitly, and put your lives into his hands, depending upon the truth of what he says. Why? Because he has been where you have not been, and has seen what you have not seen, and you believe him honest and true. He has no motive to deceive you. This is his authority. But is it equivalent to infallibility? By no means. No one supposes him to be infallible. If, after following his direction for a while, you see no signs to show that you are in the right way, you begin to think that he may have been mistaken, and some one else climbs a tree to verify his judgment, or to correct it. But if, instead, signs begin to appear to show that you are in the right way, your faith in your guide is confirmed, and his authority is practically increased. What gives a man authority as a guide, teacher, counsellor, is not our belief in his infallibility, but our belief in his knowledge; if we believe that he knows something we do not know, he becomes thereby an authority to us. If he has been where we have not been, and seen what we have not seen, he is an authority. A man who has just come from Europe or from California, who has been in the midst of a great battle, who has studied a subject which others have not studied, and made himself familiar with it, such a man is an authority to others. Observe men listening to him. All defer to him while he is speaking on this subject. He may be much more ignorant than they are in regard to other things, but, if he has had superior opportunities in regard to this subject, he is an authority. Yet they do not believe him infallible; for if, in the course of his conversation, he says anything which seems contradictory, incredible, absurd, they begin to withdraw their confidence, and may withdraw it wholly. But if, on the other hand, what he says is clear, consistent, solid with information, his authority is increased continually, and his bearers defer to him more and more. Now, the authority of the writers of the New Testament is exactly of this kind. The authority of inspiration everywhere is of this kind. An inspired man is one who is believed to have been where we have not been, and to have seen what we have not seen.