I begin the answer by saying that he does not mean a doctrinal formula. The word here rendered form' is the same which he employs in the first of the letters to Timothy, when he speaks of himself and his own conversion as being a pattern to them that should hereafter believe.' The notion intended here is not a cut-and-dried creed, but a body of teaching which will not be compressed within the limits of an iron form, but will be a pattern for the lives of the men to whom it is given. The Revised Version has the pattern,' and not the form.' I take leave to think that there were no creeds in the apostolic time, and that the Church would probably have had a firmer grasp of God's truth if there had never been any. At all events the idea of a cast-iron creed, into which the whole magnificence of the Christian faith is crushed, is by no means Paul's idea in the word here. Then, with regard to the other part of the phrase--sound words'--we all know how that is generally understood by people. Words are supposed to be sound,' when they are in conformity with the creed of the critic. A sound High Churchman is an entirely different person from a sound Nonconformist. Puritan and Sacramentarian differ with regard to the standard which they set up, but they use the word in the same way, to express theological statements in conformity with that standard. And we all know how harshly the judgment is sometimes made, and how easy it is to damn a man by a solemn shake of the head or a shrug of the shoulders, and the question whether he is sound.'
Now, all that is clean away from the apostolic notion of the word in question. If we turn to the other form of this phrase, which occurs frequently in these letters, Sound doctrine,' there is another remark to be made. Doctrine' conveys to the ordinary reader the notion of an abstract, dry, theologicalstatement of some truth. Now, what the Apostle means is not doctrine' so much as teaching'; and if you will,substitute teaching' for doctrine' you get much nearer his thought;just as you will get nearer it if for sound' with its meaning of conformity to a theological standard, you substitute what the word really means, healthy,' wholesome, health-giving, healing. All these ideas run into each other. That which is in itself healthy is health-giving as food, and as a medicine is healing. The Apostle is not describing the teaching that he had given to Timothy by its conformity with any standard, but is pointing to its essential nature as being wholesome, sound in a physical sense; and to its effect as being healthy and health-giving. Keep hold of that thought and the whole aspect of this saying changes at once.
There is only one other point that I would suggest in this first part of my sermon, as to the Apostolic meaning of these words, and it is this: healing' and holy' are etymologically connected, they tell us. The healing properties of the teaching to which Paul refers are to be found entirely in this--its tendency to make men better, to produce a purer morality, a loftier goodness, a more unselfish love, and so to bring harmony and health into the diseased nature. The one healing for a man is to be holy; and, says Paul, the way to be holy is to keep a firm hold of that body of teaching which I have presented.
Now, that this tendency to produce nobler manners and purer conduct and holier character is the true meaning of the word sound' here, and not orthodox' as we generally take it, will be quite clear, I think, if you will notice how, in another part of these same letters, the Apostle gives a long catalogue of the things which are contrary to the health-giving doctrine. If the ordinary notion of the expression were correct, that catalogue ought to be a list of heresies. But what is it? A black list of vices--deceivers,' ungodly,' sinners,' unholy,' profane,' murderers,' man-slayers,' whoremongers,' man-stealers,' liars,' perjured' persons. Not one of these refers to aberration of opinion; all of them point to divergences of conduct, and these are the things that are contrary to the healing doctrine. But they are not contrary, often, to sound orthodoxy. For there have been a great many imitators of that king of France, who carried little leaden images of saints and the Virgin in his hat and the devil in his heart. The form of sound words' is the pattern of healing teaching, which proves itself healing because it makes holy. Now, that is my first question answered.
