[7] I may remind the reader that about the middle of the ninth century there were published, by one Isidore, a collection of decisions and decrees, purporting to be by the earliest Bishops of Rome, all supporting the Papal claims as known in the Middle Ages. The collection was afterwards increased, and in the middle of the twelfth century engrafted into Gratian's _Decretum_, on which is based the Canon Law of the Roman Church. These documents are undoubtedly fabrications long after date. If we revise the opinion of our Redeemer on this conspicuous point of His teaching, where shall we securely pause? Certainly we cannot _securely_ trust, as oracular and final, His own predictions of things still future, at least in their details. HE HAS AFFIRMED IT FROM ABOVE. One great utterance is often quoted as a confession that His conscious knowledge had limits; Mark xiii. 32. Quite true; but what sort of confession is it? It indicates in its very terms the vastness of His supernatural knowledge; asserting His cognizance of the fact that _the angels in heaven did not know_ that day and hour. Such an avowal of nescience is an implicit assertion of an immeasurable insight. And has He not, _as the glorified Christ_, thrown a light of affirmation on the "opinions" of the days of His flesh? The glorified Christ sent down the Paraclete. And the first and abiding work of the Paraclete was to illuminate the Apostles with a new understanding of the truth and glory of the Old Scriptures, altogether in the lines of their crucified Master's teaching about them. Unless indeed Resurrection, and Ascension, and Pentecost are themselves to melt into the haze of myth! The New Testament is as full of the supernatural as the Old. Reverently and humbly, and with full recognition of a large place and lawful work for a true higher criticism in the literature of the Old Testament, and of the New, I yet decline to think that our Lord's estimate of the nature of the Bible is not to be final for me, and that His reasonings from it are to be revised, while yet I adore Him as my Light, my Life, and my God. And I ask my Brethren to pause many times, and on their knees, before they think otherwise. PRESENT FULFILMENTS OF PROPHECY.