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We have here a description of a true prophet. A mere official speaks because he is expected to say something: a true prophet speaks because he has something to say.

I. I BELIEVED. These words refer —

1. To the truths that God teaches.

(1) God's truths are all vital truths. The subject on which they treat is life. Clearly to see truth, and to firmly grasp it, is the life of reason. To choose the right, to do it, and to rejoice in it, is the life of the conscience. To have passions and feelings which invigorate, comfort, and ennoble is the life of the soul. Man is related to a Being who can give to him the light of reason, peace of conscience, holy and joyful emotions, and the favour of that great Being is life. His displeasure is death. Such is the momentous subject on which God's truth speaks.

(2) And as the subject, such also is the matter of God's truth. It consists of directions how to attain life, and how to escape death. Under any circumstances the knowledge of these directions would be of first importance. Some parts of the world are visited with the plague. Now suppose that a remedy were revealed, would it not be a great truth, and would we not be eager to proclaim it far and wide? But how incomparably greater is that truth which is God's salvation unto the uttermost ends of the earth!

II. THE MANNER IN WHICH GOD TEACHES THESE TRUTHS. The truth as it is taught by God exists in man.

1. As a clear apprehension. There is a great difference between clearly seeing a truth, and having only a general and confused notion of it. When you look at a landscape in a fog you can form no distinct conception of its characteristics. Truth, under similar circumstances, can produce no impression on the soul. Its beauty, importance, value are all lost upon him who has but a confused conception of it. Many think they have looked upon the Cross, but can see no glory in it. They have not really seen it. They are like the man who sees a landscape in a fog. It is owing to this that a general view of the Cross is often nothing more than a misconception; while, on the other hand, a true insight into the Cross stirs up the soul from its lowest depths. It is a heart-penetrating, soul-transforming vision; it leads the sinner to turn his back for ever on the world, and to worship the crucified One.

2. As an irresistible conviction. You believe in your own consciousness; you ask for no arguments to prove that your own consciousness is not always deceiving you. You believe in an external world; you ask for no arguments to prove that an external world is not a mire optical delusion. A child has faith in its nurse; it believes that its nurse will feed and love it and not hurt or destroy it. So he who is taught of God would be as able to disbelieve his own consciousness as to disbelieve that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

III. THEREFORE HAVE I SPOKEN. It is natural for the tongue to express what the soul knows and the heart feels; but there are two reasons in relation to gospel truth which turn, what in other cases is but natural, into a moral necessity.

1. Divine truth is of universal concernment. When "Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness" the news was important alike to every serpent-bitten Israelite; so this faithful saying is worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." The antidote to sin's poison should be made known wherever that poison rages.

2. The faith which the Church has received is one which peculiarly prompts the utterance of the tongue.

(W. Alliott.)

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KJV: We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;

WEB: But having the same spirit of faith, according to that which is written, "I believed, and therefore I spoke." We also believe, and therefore also we speak;