The parting counsel of the apostle goes back upon the substance of all his past counsels. It includes a positive and a negative counsel.

I. A POSITIVE COUNSEL. "O Timothy, keep the deposit" entrusted to thee. This refers to the doctrine of the gospel. It is "the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3).

1. The doctrine of the gospel is thus not something discovered by man, but delivered to man.

2. It is placed in the hands of Timothy as a trustee, to be kept for the use of others. It is a treasure in earthen vessels, to be jealously guarded against robbers and foes.

3. If it is kept, it will in turn keep us.

II. A NEGATIVE COUNSEL. "Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called: which some professing erred concerning the faith."

1. The duty of turning away from empty discourses and the ideas of a false knowledge.

(1) Such things were utterly profitless as to spiritual result.

(2) They were antagonistic to the doctrine of godliness; for they represented theories of knowledge put forth by false teachers, which ripened in due time into the bitter Gnosticism of later times. It was a knowledge that falsely arrogated to itself that name, for it was based on ignorance or denial of God's truth.

2. The danger of such teachings.

(1) Some members of the Church were led to profess such doctrines, perhaps because they wore a seductive aspect of asceticism, or pretended to show a shorter cut to heaven.

(2) But they lost their way and "erred concerning the faith." This false teaching undermined the true faith of the gospel.

(3) As the tense implies an event that occurred in the past, these persons were not now in the communion of the Ephesian Church. - T.C.

I. THE PERIL against which the apostle warns Timothy was the intellectual pride and subtle speculation which, afterwards, in the second and third centuries, became formulated into a sort of philosophical system. It was then known as Gnosticism, because it exalted "gnosis" — knowledge — above faith, and was of a decidedly presumptuous and pragmatical tendency. The effect of such knowledge has ever been to cause men to err concerning the faith; to lose simplicity and devoutness; to wander into the pleasant meadows of Doubting Castle, till they are seized and imprisoned by Giant Despair; and unless they there learn to pray, and bethink them of the key of promise, they are left at last to fumble and stumble among the tombs. "He who wandereth out of the way of understanding shall abide in the congregation of the dead."

II. PRESERVATION from such peril is to be found in God's answer to the prayer which Paul breathed over Timothy — "Grace be with thee." We cannot by searching find out God. Intellectual acuteness has never yet succeeded in discovering Him.

(A. Rowland, LL. B.)

What the deposit was, we may not doubt. It was the Christian faith, in its entirety and purity; and the contexts, in which the apostle's repeated warning occurs, present to us the occasions which even then rendered it necessary. "Profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called," were, even then, undermining the faith of their authors and of those who listened to them; and it was requisite that even one who had received from the lips of St. Paul himself "the form of sound words," should be exhorted to "hold it fast." But to us, at this far later stage of the Church's history, the admonition comes fraught with many a lesson, to be drawn from the experience of the past, and also from the peculiar circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, by the providence of God, as members of the Church of England. The deposit of the faith may be regarded under a more simple or a more complex form. Any Christian man who can recite the Apostles' Creed may be said to have the deposit of the faith stored in his memory; but how much more, "pertaining to life and godliness," does he not require, both for the enlightening of his understanding, and for the guidance of his life? Brethren, do we consider as we ought the precious form in which the Christian faith has been delivered to us in our Book of Common Prayer? It has been recently affirmed by a distinguished Presbyterian, that "the Church, if she would fulfil her mission, must avail herself of the riches which her children during all these ages have been gathering for her." Here is, indeed, the deposit of the faith, elucidated and interpreted in all its fulness. Learned and unlearned, the wayfaring man and little child, are here instructed, in respect of their manifold necessities and obligations, in respect of their diversified relations both to God and to man, what it is to believe the gospel of Christ. Again, there is a most important feature of our Church, in respect of which we must surely feel how urgent is the duty faithfully to guard the deposit which has been committed to our trust. We cannot but regard as a most signal instance of God's wondrous working for us, the circumstance that He accorded to us the power, which many others did not possess, of retaining in its integrity the constitution of the Church as it has existed from apostolic times. Surely a thoughtful man must ask, with all reverence, why God thus dealt with us; nor will he permit himself to hold the gift in less esteem, because it was not vouchsafed to others. If it be indeed our duty to regard our ecclesiastical polity as a blessing which has been secured to us by the grace and favour of God — if, in this regard, we have indeed cause to say, "The lines are fallen to us in pleasant places; yea, we have a goodly heritage" — then let us be very careful never ourselves to speak or to act, never to lead others to speak or to act, in the spirit of those of whom we read, that "they thought scorn of that pleasant land" which God had given them. Again, if our Book of Common Prayer be indeed a precious treasure house in which is stored for our use the deposit of the Christian faith, must we not be very careful to guard it from neglect, to secure to it its due honour? Are we, then, as careful as we should be here? We cannot be "guarding the deposit" if we give, or teach others to give, a non-natural sense to the language of the Baptismal Office, of the Catechism, of the Office for the Administration of the Holy Communion, or of the Ordinal: we are not handing on, as faithful stewards, that which has been committed to our trust, except we give their full significance to the teaching of the Prayer Book, as well as to that of the Articles. Suffer me to mention another point, which is essential to the "guarding of the deposit." A complaint is not unfrequently made of those who preach not Christ, but the Church. I do not deny that the want of a right understanding of Christian truth, and of a due feeling of its sacred character, may possibly lead to this monstrous result; but I would venture to remind you, that if we would "guard the deposit" faithfully, we must preach both Christ and His Church. It is, indeed, a fatal error not to "hold the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered, and being knit together, increaseth with the increase of God"; but it is also a most grievous error, so to hold the Head as to ignore the divinely appointed organization, through which, as the apostle assures us, the nourishment of the body is dispensed, and its unity and strength secured. We cannot speak faithfully of Christ the Vine, of Christ the Head, of Christ the chief Corner-Stone, without speaking also of that wondrous, spiritual structure, His gracious relation to which is marked by the many names of love and power which are assigned to Him in Holy Scripture. Some persons may be tempted not to "guard the deposit" in certain points, by the hope of conciliating those who are unhappily separated from us. They may desire to withdraw what others regard as unauthorized pretensions, and so to occupy a common ground with them. What, then, must be the necessary effect of their doing so, while "the deposit," as enshrined in the formularies of our Church, remains what it is? They must deprive themselves of all excuse, before God and man, for using or assenting to those formularies. And, more than this, so far as their action is concerned, the Church becomes degraded into the most presumptuous and arrogant of sects, presuming, as she does from their point of view, to utter before God words of most awful and solemn import, to which her heart does not respond, and before men to make pretences and speak "great swelling words of vanity," while she yet repudiates her title to any real distinction from other Christian bodies which put forward no such claims. If we will not "guard the deposit" which has been committed to our trust as a Church, we have no alternative but to renounce it openly and honestly, having first put to ourselves with all seriousness the momentous inquiry, "Did that deposit come to us from the hand of God, or no?" But whither will men turn, if they should unhappily resolve to forsake the historic Church of the past, which we are taught to believe and to confess, as retaining to the end of the world her imperishable continuity, marvellously as she may be taught to adapt herself to the needs of successive generations, and to the various characteristics of "the nation of them that are saved, that shall walk in her light"? Once more, let me present to you that which appears to many a further and most cogent reason for unflinching steadfastness and faithfulness to our high trust. I refer to the remarkable position in which the Church of England has stood ever since the Reformation, in respect of all other Christian bodies throughout the world; and more than ever at this day stands, by virtue of her own wide extension and of her intercommunion with other branches of the Church Catholic, holding the same faith and observing the same order with herself. "If there be," says Bishop Lightfoot, "any guiding hand in the progress of history, if there be any Supreme Providence in the control of events, if there be any Divine Presence and any Divine call — then the position of England, as the mother of so many colonies and dependencies, the heart and centre of the world's commerce and manufacture, and the position of the English Church, standing midway between extremes in theological teaching and ecclesiastical order, point to the Church of this nation, with the very finger of God Himself, as called by Him to the lofty task of reconciling a distracted kingdom and healing the wounds of the nations." For the sake, then, of this inspiring hope, under the sense of this overwhelming responsibility, let us as members of that vast communion, whose worship ascends to God from well-nigh every portion of our globe, resolve by His help to "guard the deposit" which He has committed to our trust, and to stand still in the safe paths of duty and obedience, if haply our eyes or our children's eyes may be blessed by seeing this great "salvation of God."

(G. Whittaker, M. A.)

There is no more vital and anxious thought in the religious life of to-day than the supposed conflict between science and religion. In certain quarters it has come to be taken for granted, that reason is necessarily opposed to faith; that nature and her teachings, so far as they can be understood and interpreted, are in conflict with the teachings of revelation; and that scientific men and theologians are therefore arranged in two hostile armies, having nothing in common, and engaged in a struggle which must ultimately end in the destruction of the one or the other. The result is, that scientific men and investigations are denounced as sceptical enemies of religious truth; and the compliment is abundantly returned by insinuations of bigotry and intolerance, as essential characteristics of religious teachers. And, in the popular mind, there is a vague and uncertain dread that the faith is to be overthrown, and the verities to which it clings, and upon which it is founded, are to be evaporated into myths and superstitions, which must take their place amid the exploded falsehoods of a too credulous past. A calmer and more comprehensive view of the contest will, however, justify us in saying, that the fear of the Christian is unfounded, and the sneer of the sceptic undeserved; that the apparent conflict is only an apparent one; and that the antagonism finds its field in the want of harmony, not so much between the verities of science and religion, as between scientific hypotheses and religious opinions; and that between nature and revelation, when properly understood, there must be a substantial harmony, since God is the author of them both. The misunderstanding is not between the things themselves, but between the guesses of men who seek to be their priests and interpreters. For science is simply our knowledge of nature, its facts, and its laws; and religion is simply our knowledge of God, and of our relations to Him. And, as the facts of nature reveal themselves slowly and almost reluctantly in response to patient research and careful study, it is but natural that the investigations and conclusions of one age should differ from those of another; that the latest deductions of science to-day should contradict the theories of a century ago, and that, in turn, they should expect to be contradicted by the theories of a century hence. Meanwhile, what is true remains; and this process of investigation and refutation carried on by scientific men from age to age, is but the method by which the truth concerning nature is separated from the fancies of men; and its result is, not the survival of the fittest, but the survival of the true. And yet the truthfulness of the true does not depend upon its having been discovered and known by men. No line or word on the vast page of the universe is altered by the most careful scrutiny; it is only that these mysterious words are spelled out, and read with fewer errors than other scholars made who had gone before. So, also, in religion there are certain facts which constitute its basis, and which are proposed to our faith, not as theories or opinions, but as facts. And along with these, there are systems of opinion, the deductions of human reason from the Divine premises, but which, as human deductions, are liable to be erroneous and false. And yet these human systems are but the honest efforts of men to understand the accepted facts of revelation, and to apply them to the circumstances and needs of human life. Devout men of science will never be wanting to refute the flippant sneer which, in the name of science, invades a domain beyond its proper grasp; and earnest men of theology will ever be ready to expose and correct the errors of other theological systems. And so, in science and in religion, each has, within its own adherents and disciples, its mutual check and safeguard, by which the truth is preserved, and the fancies of men, when inconsistent with it, are exploded. But the trouble begins when scientific men attempt to teach theology, or theologians assume to teach science. For as there is nothing in the study of science which necessarily makes a man a theologian, the theological views of the scientist may not be worth so much as those of an unlettered but earnest Christian; for that value is determined, not by intellectual acquisition, but by a devout habit of mind and heart. And there is nothing in the study of theology which necessarily acquaints a man with what is known as scientific truth; and therefore the scientific views of a theologian are of small value, since they are not in the line of study or thought to which he naturally devotes himself. And so long as scientists attempt to teach theology, and theologians insist upon refuting what they choose to dignify by the name of science, so long there will be a terrible warfare of words; but it will not touch nor jeopardize for a moment the indestructible harmony between true science and true religion, between a right reason and a devout faith, between the broad page of nature, written by His own finger through the long processes of His own law, and the page of inspiration, written by the human amanuensis of His own Spirit. There is one point, however, in the universe, in which nature and revelation meet; one point in which the visible creation comes in contact with the invisible and supernatural forces which pervade the universe. That solitary point is the incarnation of the Son of God. In it nature and revelation mysteriously meet and harmonize; as by it this human nature of ours — the very crown and glory of the visible creation — is taken into union with God. Here the ultimate mystery of science and religion meet and harmonize and are at one; as by the incarnation the nature of man is allied to the throne of God in a union which can never be divorced, and which waits for its final epiphany for the manifestation of the sons of God.

(W. A. Snively, D. D.)