distinctions, or lower their ideals of life or standards of duty, or dim their spiritual vision, is certainly not of God-and no ecclesiastical consecration or sanction, and no alleged attestation of miracles, or anything else, can make it their duty to do anything else than reject it."

10.-Who are the Enemies of the Bible?

"We are friends of the Bible. They are the enemies of the Bible who insist on keeping it standing upon a fictitious basis, which tends ever to melt away before free thought and candid investigation, as ice melts before fire. They are the enemies of the Bible who refuse to allow men to discriminate, judge, apply tests of reason and common sense-who say such utterly senseless things as that the Bible is either all true or all false,' and that we must either believe it all, from cover to cover, or else throw it all away.' If the array of facts, of so many and varied kinds, exhibited in the preceding pages, proves anything, it proves that the Bible is n't either all true or all a lie. Ten thousand things in it are true, and grandly true-but some things in it are not true. We are not necessitated, either to believe it all or else throw it all away, any more than I am necessitated to tear down a beautiful picture from my walls because there are scratches or dust specks on it, or turn my mother out of my house, because, with all her wealth of tenderness and love and goodness, there may be possible flaws or imperfections in her character, as there are flaws and imperfections in the character of us all."

11.-How to view and use the Bible.

Probably there is no truer conception of the Bible than as a gold mine-a gold mine inestimably rich-yet a mine still. There are quartz and earth in no small measure mixed with the gold, as in all mines; but there is also gold-true gold of God, more precious than we shall ever fully find out-mixed plentifully with the quartz and the earth. Evidently, then, the part of rational men and women is, neither to resort to the folly on the one hand, of declaring that the quartz and earth are gold, nor yet the equal folly on the other hand, of throwing away all, and declaring there is no gold, because they can plainly see quartz

and earth with the gold; but the part of rational men and women surely is to delve earnestly in the mine, casting out, without hesitation, what plainly is not gold, but saving and treasuring up, with glad appreciation and thankfulness, rich stores of what clearly is gold."

12.-How the Bible was formed.

The exact principles that guided the formation of a canon cannot be discovered. Definite grounds for the reception or rejection of books were not very clearly apprehended. The choice was determined by various circumstances. The development was pervaded by no critical or definite principle. No member of the synod (that might be at any time engaged in considering the subject of what books ought to be regarded as canonical) exercised his critical faculty; a number would decide such matters summarily. Bishops proceeded in the track of tradition or authority." Moreover, a great deal of bigotry, and partisanship, and bad blood was manifested from first to last. Bishops freely accused bishops of forgery of sacred writings and of alteration of the oldest texts, and altogether the debates and proceedings of the synods and councils that had part in settling the canon, remind one very much of some of the political conventions of our day."

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And yet, out of all this a result came, the excellence of which, on the whole, we may well be appreciative of. It is easy for the scholarship of to-day to see that the men who are responsible for our Bible being what it is now, made many and grave mistakes."

13.-The Bible Canon always an open Question.

"Luther was decidedly of the opinion that our present canon is imperfect. He thought that the Old Testament book of Esther did not belong in the Bible. On the other hand, in translating the Old Testament, he translated the apocryphal books of Judith, Wisdom, Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh. In his prefaces he gives his judgment concerning these books. With regard to First Maccabees, he thinks it almost equal to the other books of Holy Scripture, and not unworthy to be reckoned among them. Of Wisdom, he says he was long in doubt whether it should be num

bered among the canonical books; and of Sirach, he says that it is a right good book, proceeding from a wise man. He had judgments equally decided regarding certain New Testament books. He thought the Epistle to the Hebrews came neither from Paul nor any of the apostles, and was not to be put on an equality with Epistles written by apostles themselves. The Apocalypse (or Revelation) he considered neither apostolic nor prophetic, and of little or no worth. He did not believe the Epistle of Jude proceeded from an apostle. James' Epistle he pronounced unapostolic, and 'an epistle of straw.'

"The great Swiss reformer, Zwingli, maintained that the Apocalypse is not properly a Biblical book. Even Calvin did not think that Paul was the author of Hebrews, or Peter of the book called II. Peter."

"As to the New Testament canon, that was never settled only in a most haphazard and utterly inadequate way. Up to the beginning of the second century, no one seemingly ever thought of such a thing as any writings ever being regarded as Sacred Scripture, except the Old Testament writings. For a long time after the gospels and various epistles came into existence, they were much less esteemed than the Old Scriptures. Indeed, up to about the middle of the second century they were not so highly esteemed as the oral traditions of the churches in which any of the apostles had preached. By the close of the second century, however, a change appears. Certain New Testament books have come into more general favor than the rest, and are beginning to be classed to a certain extent by themselves as a new collection of Sacred Scriptures. As time goes on, they grow

more and more into use among the churches. Yet for centuries the various churches continued to use, side by side with the writings which make up our New Testament to-day, various books which we call spurious."

14.-The long Period of the Bible's Growth.

"The various histories, biographies, poems, prophecies, letters, and productions of one kind and another which make up this collection of literature called our Bible, was more than a thousand years coming into existence; some of the productions making their appearance (at least in substance, if not in their present

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form) in the morning of Jewish civilization, as early in the nation's history as the nation had a literature at all; while others did not come into being until the nation had passed through long and varied experiences of contact with some of the richest civilizations of the ancient world, including among others the Phonician, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman." Comparing the date of the origin of our own Sacred Scriptures with the date of the origin of the other great Sacred Scriptures of the world, we see from the foregoing that no part of our Scriptures can have been written so early by probably some centuries as the earliest portions of the Vedas and Zend Avesta, which are decided by the best authorities to have been produced as far back as from 1000 to 2000 B. C. On the other hand, we see that certain portions of our Sacred Scriptures-the whole New Testament part, with possibly one or more books of the Old-were written considerably later than any of the other great Bibles except the Koran, which was not produced till the seventh century after Christ."

"The writings nearest the time of Jesus after the Epistles of Paul are the Epistle to the Hebrews (certainly not Paul's) and the book of Revelation. These were both written from 65 to 70 A.D."

"Of the existence of the Four Gospels we learn with certainty only in the fourth quarter of the second century, one hundred and fifty years after the death of Jesus. The earliest, Matthew, cannot have received its present form much before the end of the first century. The latest, John, dates from about the year 135. Possibly from a few years earlier than this, possibly from a few years later."

15.-Date of the Birth of Jesus.

Popular chronology implies that Jesus was born 1896 years ago last Christmas-day. But this chronology is notoriously inaccurate so far as the year is concerned, and arbitrary as concerns the day. The Christian era, that is, the dating of events from the birth of Jesus, was an invention of the abbot Dionysius in the sixth century after Christ. Before this time events had been dated from the founding of Rome, or from the accession of this or that emperor to the throne. But the investigation of Dionysius was conducted without any critical acumen. The Gospels

represent Jesus as being born before the death of Herod ; but Herod died four years before the beginning of our era. Luke associates the birth of Jesus with a certain taxing of Quirinius. But this taxing was six years after the beginning of our era. The relations of Jesus to John the Baptist afford somewhat more satisfactory data. Reckoning from these, the average of critical opinion gravitates to a point three or four years before the beginning of our era. If Jesus was born, as Keim and others think, before the death of Herod, some three or four years earlier would be the true date, and this year of ours (1897) would properly be the year 1903, 1904, or 1905. Certainty is here impossible. It is only safe to say that Jesus was born from three to eight years before the time suggested by our popular chronology."

16.-The Story of the Miraculous Birth.

The genesis of the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus is so easily accounted for without supposing any basis of reality, that one must be wilfully credulous to entertain the idea for a single moment. It is of a piece with various stories predicating the miraculous birth of famous persons, especially of famous teachers of religion. Buddha and Zoroaster share with Jesus in this doubtful honor. The fundamental Gospel tradition is wholly innocent of any such idea. So, too, are the Gospels in their present shape, beyond the legends of the infancy. Paul is equally silent where he would have been voluble enough if he had heard or given a moment's heed to such a tale. No, he is contradictory rather than silent. For when he speaks of Jesus as "born of a woman," it is only the madness of dogmatic preconception that can imagine any denial of the human father. The expression was the current phrase for human generation. But we have more emphatic contradiction close at hand in the legends of the birth and infancy. Both Matthew and Luke deduce Jesus from David through Joseph. What are we to infer from this remarkable phenomenon, if not that these genealogies were the invention of a time when the miraculous birth of Jesus was an unheard-of fable?

17.-The Messianic Hope.

"Few subjects have received more conscientious study than the Messianic hope; and now, at length, though much remains in