Yes, brethren! it was necessary for this people. Jesus declares why it was necessary. '_And ye have not His Word abiding in you: for whom He hath sent, Him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life._' I think that the late learned Bishop of Limerick and others, who have maintained that the verb ἐρευνᾶτε, in the 39th verse, would better be translated by the present tense of the indicative than by the imperative, have produced sound arguments for their opinion, and that the context is all in favour of it. But if the previous verse and those which follow be heeded, I am quite willing to adopt our version; the sense will be radically the same; and any who think that they cannot enforce the duty of studying the Bible, if they are deprived of this precept, may retain it as a motto for their sermons. What the Word of God is in St. John's Gospel, we have not now to learn; he has been teaching us from the first verse of it onwards. How that Word must abide in men, if they are to have any light; how the rejection of it is the choice of darkness, he has also been telling us, not once, but continually. Those who will not have the Word of God abiding in them, must shut out the invisible world, must become the slaves of the visible world. They may not have idols of wood and stone; but they must have idols. Besides the grosser idolatry of money,--to which, as a nation, they will be driven by the want of any spiritual object,--their religious men will fall into the worship of _letters_. The letters of the book which testify of a living God, will receive the homage which the only God claims in this book for Himself. This was the condition of the Jewish people,--especially of the Jewish teachers,--when our Lord came among them in the flesh. '_They searched the Scriptures; for in them they thought they had life._' And those Scriptures they made the excuses for rejecting Him in whom life dwelt,--the living Word of God. This charge our Lord brings against them here and elsewhere. That he wished them to search the Scriptures which testified of Him, no one, I suppose, doubts. That He commanded them to do so in this place, I am not at all anxious to dispute. And oh! how rejoiced should I be if we English Christians, heirs of Jewish privileges, felt that command as indeed addressed to ourselves! if we were ready to obey it! if, instead of talking about the Bible as the only religion of Protestants, writing its name upon banners, declaring that we are ready to die for it, we would indeed search into its treasures, because it testifies of Him in whom alone we can have life!