heir official descendants,
collected the Old Testament Canon of Scripture. Yes, but when?
Somewhere about the time of our Lord, when the books had been for ages
recognised as of God. It is true that the Christian Church collected
the New Testament writings into a Bible, and arrived at a decision
concerning certain books the authority of which had been in debate.
Yes, but when? After they had been for 300 years accepted as the
God-given guide of the Church. _Evidently it was not their being
collected into a Bible that made them of authority, but rather the fact
of their possessing authority made them be collected into a Bible_.

3.--Again, I repeat the question, what gave them that authority? And
there seems no possible answer but this, that they possessed it of
themselves. They commanded the position they held by their own power.
Men's moral sense and reason combined to establish them. They appealed
by their own instrinsic worth to the God-given moral faculty, and the
response to that appeal through all the ages since is in reality the
main foundation of the Bible's position.

Look at the Old Testament. If we at the present day are asked why we
receive it as inspired, we usually reply that we receive it on the
authority of our Lord and His apostles. They accepted it as the Word
of God, and handed it on to us with their official approval of it.
Well, but why was it accepted before their day without any such formal
sanction? How did men come to believe and obey as Divinely inspired
the words of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and the rest? Except in
the case of Moses, there were no miracles or portents; no external
voice from heaven to command men's allegiance. They were not
established on their Divine supremacy by any single authority. Why
then were their utterances accepted?

It seems evident there can be but one answer. They asserted that
supremacy by their own intrinsic power. Men were compelled to
acknowledge that their declaration that "the word of the Lord had come
to them" was true. There was that in the messages of the prophets and
in the evidence by which they were accompanied, which compelled this
belief.

The books of the New Testament became recognised among Christians just
as the books of the Old Testament had been recognised among the Jews,
by virtue of their own inherent evidence. Certain witnesses came
forward and recorded in writing the teaching of our Lord, or announced
certain mes