ries; but we think whatever they be they ought not to set aside the external evidence. The questions, however, relating to the authorship of these works belong more to the criticism of the respective books than to an inquiry respecting the canon in general.

The opinion that the Alexandrian Jews adopted a different canon from those of Palestine rests upon no certain grounds. This view has been advocated by different parties for different purposes; by the church of Rome to justify the canonical authority with which she invests the apocryphal books, and by the Rationalists in order to render the canonical writings uncertain. The reasons for adopting this notion are-First. A statement made by Jerome in his preface to the book of Tobit, and another in his prologue to the story of Judith. He states that these works formed part of the Hagiographa, but recent criticism has decided that the true reading is Apocrypha-not Hagiographa, the alteration having been made to serve party interests. Second. The usage of the Church Fathers. There is no doubt that the fathers manifested considerable regard for the apocryphal writings, and in some instances placed them upon an equality with the admittedly canonical Scriptures. But this arose in a great measure from the fact that their knowledge of the Jewish scriptures was chiefly derived from the Alexandrian translation; and critical inquiry had not then determined with any degree of exactness what was the doctrine of the early Alexandrians concerning the canon, so that the fathers used in their writings and permitted to be read in churches the apocryphal books found in the Septuagint. That there was, however, no difference between the canon of the Alexandrian and that of the Palestinian Jews is evident from the fact that the former were always anxious to be considered one with the latter. They endeavoured to avoid anything like the appearance of schism;* but this would have been impossible had they admitted as canonical any books not found in the Jewish canon, for this would have been subverting the foundations of their common faith. The son of Sirach, who resided in Egypt, refers to the translation of the law, the prophets, and the other books of the fathers into the Greek tongue, but he makes not the slightest allusion to any difference between the two canons. Neither can any trace of such a difference be found in the writings of Philo or Josephus. That they were acquainted with the apocry pha is unquestionable; but there is no instance in which either of them refers to the apocryphal books as canonical. Josephus, indeed, plainly affirms that the history of his people from the time of Artaxerxes had been written, but that these writings were not esteemed of like authority with those of their forefathers. And this evidence is all the more weighty as Josephus leaned in some measure towards Alexandrian Judaism, and would not have written thus had the Alexandrians received these books as canonical.

Philo was sent to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice in the name of his countrymen.

The references in the New Testament to a complete canon of sacred writings are generally known, and require no remark here. And the questions arising out of the relation of the extra-Judaic sects, the Samaritans and Essenes, to the canon-the reading of apocryphal books in the early churches and in modern Protestant communities-the canon of the church of Rome, will have to be omitted as in no way affecting the conclusion we have endeavoured to establish, that the Old Testament canon, as commonly accepted by Protestants, comprehends all the writings which in the old economy established any real claim to be regarded as of divine authority.

The New Testament canon.* The formation of the New Testament canon is involved in considerable obscurity. There is not much difficulty in establishing the authenticity and authority of the books separately; but the manner in which they were formed into one collection, and the time when they were first adopted by the church in that form, are points not easily decided. An early tradition names John as the person by whom the sacred writings of the new covenant were collected. This tradition is not well supported, and furthermore it conflicts with the difference of opinion respecting the canon which prevailed subsequently to the time of John. Had the collection received the impress of apostolic sanction, the question would have been settled at once. The founders of the church appear to have passed away and the apostleship to have ceased some time before any definite canonization of the New Testament writings took place. That the evangelists and apostles wrote for the purpose of communicating to the churches what ought to be received as a rule for determining belief and practice seems reasonable enough. The age, constituting as it did the most important crisis-period in human history, required as such an authoritative sacred literature if ever such a literature was required. The realisation, in the person of the God-man, of previous revelations, the development of the germinal principles contained in the oracles of the favoured people, required an authoritative declaration. The revelations themselves had been authoritatively announced, and what less could be required by the fulfilment of them, seeing that this fulfilment had to form the inauguration of a new epoch? Notwithstanding this Landerer maintains that the New Testament writers could never intend to constitute their writings an original source of authority; and he assigns as the reason, "that it was more essential for them to regard, and have others regard, the Old Testament as such, that the gospel might be recognised as the fulfilment of the Old Testament." Now, the Old Testament, as an authority, was ever asserted by the New Testament writers. It

• The word Canon in this part of the article is used to denote the New Tes tament, unless otherwise stated.

contained the revelations concerning the Christ, but it could not be in itself an authority for the fulfilment of them. This authority had to be furnished by other writings showing that Jesus was the Christ. The Old Testament does not declare Jesus to be the Christ-it simply declares that the Christ should come. The New Testament declares that in Jesus of Nazareth the revelations concerning the Christ have been realised, that he is indeed the Christ; and on this point it is unquestionably an original source of authority. The Old Testament, in relation to the manifested Messiah, is as much dependent upon the New Testament as the latter is upon the former; and if the dependence of the one upon the other destroys all claim to original authority in the one case, it does so in the other; and we reach the conclusion, that in neither division of the Scriptures have we any original source of authority at all. The Christian Scriptures are co-ordinate with the Jewish; each class by itself constitutes an authority, and so do both together. If the evangelists and apostles did not write with a design that their books should be an authority, for what purpose did they write? The evangelists certainly never intended merely to furnish the church with instructive and entertaining information that had to be of no more weight in deciding belief and practice than an allusion to the geography of the country in which the events they record transpired; neither can the apostolical epistles have been intended merely as letters of friendly advice. To affirm this is to affirm that the men were uninspired, and thus destroy the distinctive character of the Christian Scriptures. The apostle John avers that what he wrote was written that men might believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, that believing they might have life through his name; and statements equivalent to this are not at all uncommon in the New Testament writings.

Though the apostles wrote authoritatively, yet there does not appear to have been a complete collection of their writings made while they lived. Considering the character of John's gospel, it is probable that he had an acquaintance with the other gospels; and as he spent the later years of his long and laborious life in the centre of Gentile Christendom, and not in Judea, it is also probable that he was acquainted with many of the apostolic letters; but there is no evidence to show that in his day the canon was completed. In the Second Epistle of Peter ch. iii. 15, 16, reference is made to the epistles of Paul, and it is maintained that this reference at least favours the opinion that a New Testament collection was at that time made. The passage certainly states that Paul had written epistles, and that these epistles were somewhat widely known; but that they were gathered together in one collection, along with other writings of a similar character, and thus accepted by the churches, is more than the passage really

affirms. It may also be remarked that the passage is found in an epistle which had a long struggle to establish its canonicity; any light which it throws upon the formation of the canon is indeed trifling.

The view generally adopted, and probably the most correct, is, that the early churches, especially the most powerful, collected for themselves the writings attributed to the apostles and regarded as of divine origin. There would thus spring up throughout Christendom a number of separate collections, the substantial agreement of which would lead in the course of time to the adoption of a uniform collection, the various Christian communities supplying each other with the books incontestibly apostolical that might be wanting in any particular church collection. That collections of sacred writings were in this way formed seems probable from the high veneration in which the apostles and their works were held, and also from the fact that only by these standards could the faith and practice of the church be determined. The apostles were the founders of the church and the witnesses of Jesus. There was also manifested by the early Christians considerable care in discriminating between spurious and authentic compositions; and the fact that several books were for some time regarded as doubtful by certain churches shows that each community asserted its right to examine all claims to the dignity of inspired writings and satisfy itself that in each case they were well founded. The interest taken by the churches in each other's welfare could not but lead to an interchange of writings for the purposes of transcription, and gradually to the formation of a complete canon. A foundation for this interchange may be found in Colossians, iv. 16. Adopting this view, it will follow that churches widely separated would be the last to agree respecting the number of sacred books; and such appears to have been the case, as for instance, the epistle to the Hebrews was accepted in the Syrian church before it was known in the west.

In addition to the causes already mentioned, which contributed to the formation of the canon, there are two others which ought not to be omitted, viz., persecution and heresy, for they unquestionably contributed to hasten the collection of the sacred writings. The oppressive measures which expatriated the Christians and made them strangers in other lands, led to a closer union among the churches as sufferers in a common cause, and originated circumstances favourable to the formation of a common collection of inspired books. The heresies which sprang up in the early churches rendered a standard of appeal necessary. Men departed from the general faith of Christendom and promulgated speculations of their own, diverging widely from the Christian thought and practice of the period, and it became more and more a felt necessity that there ought to be a commonly recognised collection of Scriptures to which

appeal might be made for the overthrow of these attempts to subvert the Christian faith. Persecution and Gnosticism appear to have furnished the pressure which was requisite to lead the churches to form a definite canonical collection.

The second and third century writers make almost constant reference to the evangelistic and apostolic writings. The references are so numerous and varied that they are to be found selected from nearly every book now considered canonical. This has been thought by some almost sufficient to settle the question of an existing canon at that time. These numerous quotations place the existence of the books beyond all dispute, and indicate unmistakably the position they occupied in the church-thought of that period, and also afford strong evidence that the canon was in course of formation; but that it was fixed and complete seems more than the evidence warrants. The most that can be said is, that there appears to have been great oneness of opinion, which ultimately led to the definite canonization of the writings. Clement of Rome, in his epistle to the Corinthians, reminds them of the supreme authority of the writing Paul had addressed to them; and Polycarp writes to the Phillipians in a similar spirit and manner. Ignatius, in writing to the Romans, makes reference to the writings of Paul and Peter and carefelly distinguishes between them and his own epistle, allowing a far higher worth and importance to the apostolic writings than to what he had written. During this period modes of expression also began to be used in reference to New Testament writings which were common in reference to Old Testament Scriptures, such as, "The Holy Scriptures," "The Oracles of God." And doctrines and usages were established by citations from evangelistic and apostolic writings, introduced by the formula, "The Scriptures say," or, "The Holy Spirit says," intimating beyond all mistake the value attached by the writers to the productions thus referred to. The opinion of a definite canon in the second century has perhaps been formed by overlooking the fact that the fathers often cite non-apostolic writings for doctrinal proof, and in some instances introduce them by the same formulas as writings now admittedly canonical. They also attached considerable importance to tradition. The idea of canonicity does not appear to have been so exclusive then as it afterwards became. There is probably in second century writers sufficient to intimate that they did distinguish between apostolic productions and those which could not claim such authorship, but in some instances the two classes are brought into such close juxtaposition, both for proof of doctrine and in church service, that it appears probable canonicity was not so definite and settled then as at a later period. The principal authorities in the second and third centuries, in addition to the fathers already named, are, the Syrian Version, the Murato