Church.

Had it been open to question among the early Fathers, whether Christ really rose from the dead or not, whether He spoke the Sermon on the Mount, or wrought the miracle of the loaves and fishes, would it have been possible to have taught Christianity on any common ground? Nay, rather, would not the severe morality inculcated have been let down to the selfish demands of corrupt nature, and the divine lineaments of Christ's religion been hopelessly lost amid the fantastic shapes that human sophistry would have given to it? In other words, it would have become merely a system of philosophy, not a religion, and would have left as little trace on the future morals of mankind as did the teaching of Socrates, vaguely preserved as it is in the pages of Plato and Xenophon. Nothing appears to us more certain than that Christianity, humanly speaking, owes its enduring empire over man in an especial degree to the Book of Inspiration. It has formed a common ground, on which Greek and barbarian, learned and unlearned, bond and free, could always meet and its doctrines have been stated in a way that

commends them equally to every type of mankind and every degree of civilisation.

But the objection may be started, was not the early Church plagued by heretical sects? Do we not soon hear of Gnostics and Ebionites, of Marcionites and Manicheans? Were not the early Church fathers engaged in constant disputes with those schismatics? And if the New Testament had been universally accepted as the exposition of Christian doctrine, how came these divisions among the early Christians? We readily grant that there hung upon the skirts of the Christian Church, in the early ages, many false professors and many insidious friends. The name of Christian was used by many, whom Christ or His Apostles would have disowned. The heretical sects were in most cases the offspring of semi-Pagan accommodations of Christianity; instead of founding upon the Sacred Scriptures alone, they combined with them the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, of Philo of Alexandria, of Epictetus and Seneca; they were a spurious compound, which, in the nature of things, could not last, and thus we see them

dying out one by one; and those sects alone survived which made a common appeal to the Scriptures.

But it may be urged further, were there not early disputes about the canon of Scripture itself? Do we not hear of an epistle of Barnabas that obtained momentary authority, and some spurious gospels that floated about for some time in the early Church? The minds of many have been unsettled by allegations of this kind, which strike at the authority of the New Testament; for if indeed we have only a human compilation out of a mass of early writings, claiming equal authority, then truly we have a weak basis upon which to found an authoritative system of religion. It is not within the scope of these remarks to investigate the canonical claims of Holy Scripture, but we will adduce one or two considerations admitted to be true, which tend greatly to allay anxiety. The spurious books, claiming to be inspired, were few in number; they never were marked by the imprimatur of the catholic or universal Church. They never even acquired a decided ascendancy over any important section

of the true Church; and what is still more important, they differed widely in scope and character from the contents of our New Testament; their internal evidence of inferior origin is irresistible, and they very soon passed out of the category even of doubtful inspiration. The wonder is that, considering the ignorance of the age, and the want of critical knowledge, there should have been so few successful attempts to impose spurious accounts of Christ upon the early Church.

But graver difficulties have been started with regard to the canonicity of certain portions of our New Testament. Prodigious pains have been taken to invalidate the Gospel and Revelation of John and some of the minor Epistles, and to produce an impression that our canon is the growth of a later age, when corrupt additions were made by a cunning and selfish priesthood. Now we admit that some difficulties have been raised, which it is very hard, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, to answer in full. It is not possible now to say precisely at what period the several books of the New Testament made their appearance, and what was

their reception by the existing societies of Christians; but we do find in the early Church fathers such abundant quotations from the writings of the New Testament, that, had the original documents been lost, their place could almost have been supplied by means of these citations. This is especially true of the first three Gospels, which are largely quoted by all writers, from Justyn Martyr to Augustine. It is true that the earliest of the fathers do not quote freely from the writings of John, though some of them use phraseology so like his instance, Justyn Martyr about the supper-that, if not a quotation, it was a free rendering of his ideas; but this comparative silence can be explained on the supposition—a most natural one-that John wrote in his old age. His Gospel was obviously given as a supplement to the synoptical accounts, and his revelation was a vision at Patmos, where he was banished in extreme old age; and it is quite supposable that his writings, which may not have been produced till towards the close of the first century, would not have been diffused widely through the Church till the middle of the next, and by that time we find them appear