THE title of this tract is an Apostolic caution against false doctrine. It forms part of a warning which St. Paul addressed to Hebrew Christians. It is a caution just as much needed now as it was eighteen hundred years ago. Never, I think, was it so important for Christian ministers to cry aloud continually, “Be not carried about.”

That old enemy of mankind, the devil, has no more subtle device for ruining souls than that of spreading false doctrine. “A murderer and a liar from the beginning,” he never ceases going to and fro in the earth, seeking whom he may devour. Outside the Church he is ever persuading men to maintain barbarous customs and destructive superstitions. Human sacrifice to idols, gross, revolting, cruel, disgusting worship of abominable false deities, – persecution, slavery, cannibalism, child murder, devastating religious wars, —all these are a part of Satan's handiwork, and the fruit of his suggestions. Like a pirate, his object is to sink, burn, and destroy. Inside the Church he is ever labouring to sow heresies, to propagate errors, to foster departures from the faith. If he cannot pre vent the waters flowing from the Fountain of Life, he tries hard to poison them. If he cannot destroy the medicine of the Gospel, he strives to adulterate and corrupt it. No wonder that he is called “Apollyon, the destroyer.”

The Divine Comforter of the Church, the Holy Ghost, has always employed one great agent to oppose Satan's devices. That agent is the Word of God. The Word expounded and unfolded,—the Word explained and opened up, the Word made clear to the head and applied to the heart, the Word is the chosen weapon by which the devil must be confronted and confounded. The Word was the sword which the Lord Jesus wielded in the temptation. To every assault of the Tempter, he replied, “It is written.” The Word is the sword which His ministers must use in the present day, if they would successfully resist the devil. The Bible, faithfully and freely expounded, is the safeguard of Christ's Church.

Reader, I desire to remember this lesson today, and I invite your attention to the text which stands at the head of this tract. Give me your attention while I try to show you what it contains. You live in an age when men profess to dislike dogmas and creeds, and are filled with a morbid dislike to controversial theology. He who dares to say of one doctrine that “it is true,” and of another that “it is false,” must expect to be called narrow-minded and uncharitable, and to lose the praise of men. Nevertheless the Scripture was not written in vain. Listen while I try to exhibit the mighty lessons contained in St. Paul's words to the Hebrews. They are lessons for us as well as for them.