ART. II. GENESIS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

[SECOND PART.]

SPEAKING more specifically, careless "higher critics," in disparagement of the integrity of the Bible, have said more than once that it was the Council of Trent which decided what books should and what books should not constitute the Bible. How absurd! That council did not convene until the year of our Lord 1545. Hence the canon of the Old Testament, we are safe in saying, had been decided on fifteen hundred years before that council assembled; and the New Testament books, as to their constitution and divine authority, had been established beyond possible disturbance or change more than a thousand years before that council met. What, therefore, if the Council of Trent, or earlier church councils or synods from the second century down, had voted at various times, as they did, that the books now composing the Bible are canonical, and that all others are apocryphal? What if the papal Church had added to the canon seven books, as it did, not now found in our Protestant Bible? Are we to be disturbed on these accounts? Or what if those people had wrangled day and night about the authorship of the books of the Bible? What if they had even cut out with shears, or had mutilated in other ways, such writings of the Bible as they judged unfit? What if they had pasted into the Bible the rulings of church councils and other theological dogmas to their entire satisfaction? Need the world be troubled? These councils, be it remembered, appeared too late on the scene to do harm. Such ecclesiastical actions and decisions have nothing more to do in affecting the questions now before the Christian world than if they never had taken place. They have no more significance in the judgment of thoughtful people than would the vote to-day of any American church assembly that all the books now constituting the Bible, and no others, are canonical; no more significance than would the vote of some Methodist conference or of some Congregational council to reject the Epistle of James, and insert in its place the sermons of John Wesley or those of President Edwards. The action of five hundred thousand church councils after the second century, as it appears

to us, would not and could not make the slightest difference as to the original constitution or authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures.

But this "higher criticism" distemper has not been confined to church councils. More than one early and scholarly Christian, as well as others of later and of late date, while exercising the right of private judgment, have claimed that certain books now in the Bible ought to have been rejected, and that other books which are just as good as any of those now composing the Bible ought to have been made canonical. In different communities this individual judgment, a form of "higher criticism," began within three hundred and fifty years. after Christ.

Certain leaders in the Eastern Church about that time objected to the Apocalypse because of its contents: they could not understand it, and concluded that it was not inspired, and that it should therefore be dropped from the Bible.

Here was the exercise of private judgment. So, likewise, certain members in the Western Church at an early date objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews because their private judgment suggested to them that Paul would not have written some things contained therein.

There were persons who objected to the Second and Third Epistles of John on the ground of their brevity; they reasoned, as they thought wisely, that if John had composed those letters he would have written more at length.

Still others objected to the Epistle to Philemon because of its private character. There were Christian scholars who thought that the Epistle of Barnabas and the first Epistle of Clement ought to have equal authority with the canonical New Testament writings.

Augustine made little distinction between the Apocrypha and the other books. Origen wanted to insert in the Bible the Book of Baruch, and Athanasius wanted to reject the Book of Esther. This Book of Esther, especially because the name of God does not appear in it, was looked on coldly by a large number of the early critics. Jewish rabbis more than once expressed the opinion that it should be excluded from the canon. It was omitted from the list of canonical Old Testament books given by Melito of Sardis. It was likewise omitted

from the list given by Gregory Nazianzen. Athanasius was inclined to rank it with the non-canonical books, and Luther suspected it. Luther's "higher criticism" extended to other books, and with regard to some of them was pronouncedly heroic. His final judgment was, that "Isaiah borrowed his whole heart and knowledge from David," and that "the history of Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible." "The Epistle to the Hebrews is," said Luther, "void of apostolic authority." He also said that "St. James's epistle is truly an epistle of straw;" and he added that "the Epistle of Jude allegeth sayings and stories which have no place in Scripture."

Though more mildly expressed, Melanchthon's judgment coincided with Luther's. Erasmus, one of the most learned fathers of the Reformation, thought that Hebrews, Second Peter, and Revelation should have no place in the sacred volume. Zwingle rejected the Apocalypse, and Ecolampadius placed James, Jude, Second Peter, Second and Third John, and the Apocalypse along with the Apocrypha. Calvin did not consider Hebrews to be the work of Paul, or Second Peter to be the work of the apostle whose name it bears. He likewise criticised the book of Revelation because it was to him unintelligible, and the pastors of Geneva were prohibited by him from all attempts at its interpretation; and the celebrated Dr. South scrupled not to pronounce it a book that either found a man mad or left him so.

But more than this; there are scholars in our day who feel at liberty, practically, to reject portions of the Bible, and it is well to bear in mind that they have just as good reasons and rights for doing so as had Augustine, Erasmus, Luther, or Calvin. There are among us, too, preachers who never take a text from the Old Testament; others who never take one involving the rigors of the law or the doctrine of future punishment; and still others there are who regret that the words devil, hell, and the like appear in the Bible.

Overzealous prohibitionists wish that the account of the wine-miracle at Cana had been expunged from the gospel record, and are much troubled by reason of Paul's advice to the dyspeptic Timothy.

The stalwart Arminian easily dispenses with the eighth chapter of Romans, and the stern Calvinist can get on admirably

without the ninth chapter of that same epistle. The extreme Unitarian votes down the first chapter of the Gospel according to John; and of what conceivable use to the Universalist is the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew? Many of the "higher critics," first and last, have assailed the scientific and historic subject-matter of the Bible, asserting that it is full of errors. Others of them judge that the materials composing the Bible are not well proportioned. One would prefer a Bible having more poetry, and others would prefer one having less. Some, if left to decide in these matters, would suggest more history and biography, others less. There have been and are differences of opinion as to how much prophecy and how many proverbs should enter into a Bible compilation. A few extremists in the school of "higher criticism" have suggested that the Bible would be much improved by the building into it of passages from Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, and Virgil; they would introduce into it passages from the British and American poets and essayists, and for spice would insert choice passages from McDonald, Dickens, George Eliot, and some, perhaps, from Robert Ingersoll, while their rejection of what is now in the Bible would be such as to make an honest man cringe. In fact, if "higher critics" all along had had their way and their say not much, if any, of the original Bible would be left in our possession.*

But our readers need not be told that the world's second sober thought often reverses, and frequently is better than its first; we trust that such at length will be the outcome and experience of our friends, the modern "higher critics."

A few examples of this improved second thought may be instructive. The Jewish rabbis in the days of Ezra and later on, for instance, thought that the books of Moses were so much more sacred than the Psalms of David that the manuscript rolls of the two should not lie so as to touch one another. But modern Christian judgment would far sooner lose from the Bible the writings of Moses than the Psalms of David.

* A few years ago we were informed by the author of a book entitled The Religion of Humanity that the Free Religious Association had commenced to write a Bible for humanity, and that "one scholar has been toiling long in the British Museum, collecting and sifting the materials of which it might be composed." We hope he is still at work; we are anxious to see this new Bible.

Many of the rabbis refused to rank Daniel on a par with Ezekiel. But the Christian world now lifts Daniel onto at least as high a plane as the one accorded to Ezekiel; Daniel it is who had the vision of the coming Son of man, which Christ appro priated to himself.

It is now acknowledged that no book of the Bible teaches more beautifully the lesson of an overruling Providence than does Esther, though omitting throughout the name of God. And this offense is now fully pardoned, for no slight was intended; the name of Deity was omitted because the book was designed to be read in Jewish homes during feasting times, and it was far more reverential to omit, under such circumstances, direct mention of the name of God.

The very reason that led Luther to reject the Epistle of James, namely, that it emphasized "works," leads others to feel that the Bible would be defective without that epistle; and had Luther lived longer and got further away from his antagonism to every thing papal he would not have asserted so emphatically as he did his right of "private judgment" as to what books should; and what ones should not, be included in the Bible.

The reasons that have led one man lightly to esteem the eighth chapter of Romans, and another to object to the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, and still another to pass by the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, have led others to feel that the Bible would be incomplete if deprived of these very portions. The book of Revelation, though among those the oftenest criticised in the past, is now regarded as one of the most wonderful of the prophetic books, and one of the sublimest productions in the realms of literature. The apocryphal books, which some of the church fathers and many of the papal councils decided to be of the same value and authority as the other Scriptures, are now decided by the world's best scholarship to be utterly unworthy of a place in the sacred volume.* Bible statements relating to scientific matters which once occasioned no little uneasiness are now used as evidence of Bible

*The apocryphal books of the Old Testament are not found written in the Hebrew tongue; they were never received by Jews as canonical; none of them are found in the catalogue of Melita, Bishop of Sardis, in the second century. Most modern critics agree that for the most part they are nothing but romances which sprang up after the return of the Jews. The judgment of Dr. Kitto is approved by nearly all modern scholars. He says: "Every attentive reader must perceive