PART FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

THE BOOK: ITS ORIGIN.

Biblos, Bible, means the Book. "Bring me the book," said Sir Walter Scott, upon his dying bed.

"What book?" he was asked.

replied, "the Word of God."

"There is but one book," he

It is the oldest book in the world. The only other relics of an age as old, are found in hieroglyphic writings on the stone-work of tombs and monuments. The ancient books of India, and of China, are proved to be of much later origin than the books of Moses, and it is only the vanity of nations which has given to their early histories a fabulous date.

Our Book stands alone. There is none to compare to it in antiquity. It has no rival.

Whatever records once existed of the great empires of the far back ages and peoples, have perished, except those carved on durable stone. But the Bible still abides with all its freshness and interest, showing that God, its Author, must himself have watched over his written word, in which he has revealed his will to man.

Its contents represent different ages and writers. It begins at the very beginning of the human era, sketches the world's progress for four thousand years, and then records the advent, the life, the sayings, the death, the resurrection and ascension of the incarnate Son of God, together with the publication of his Gospel by his chosen Apostles.

The Bible must be the invention either of good men or angels, bad men or devils, or else it is from God. It could not be the invention of good men or good angels, for they neither could nor would make a book and attribute it to the Lord God, when

this was false. The Bible claims to be the word of the Lord. It is impossible that good men could forge his holy name.

It could not, on the other hand, be by bad men or evil spirits, for such beings would not produce a work which forbids all sin and threatens eternal condemnation to those who indulge in it. Hence, the Bible must be from God.

This book is unexampled and inimitable. The sublimity of the thought; the majesty and simplicity of its expression; the beauty and the purity of its teaching; the universality and expressive brevity of its precepts; and their adaptation to the nature and wants of man; the constant forgetfulness of themselves which characterizes all the writers of the various books; the simple yet sublime presentation of Jesus of Nazareth, which, without description or eulogy, places him immeasurably above the highest type of mere humanity-all go to impress the mind with the overwhelming conviction that the Bible originated with God, and contains his revealed will.

The New Testament contains the words and records the life of Jesus, the Son of Mary. It originated in his calling around him a number of plain, unambitious men to be witnesses of his life and his work.

Jesus wrote no book. He left no memorials of his life or his words. Yet all that is taught in the New Testament is by his authority, is indeed his diction. To preach him, to obey him, to carry out his mission, was the object of each writer of the books of the New Testament. It is, then, the book of the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is, in fact, its Supreme Author. Son of God.

It originated with Jesus, the

Hence, the New Testament

as this term really means-is the written word and will of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

CHAPTER II.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BOOK,

The New Testament defines its own inspiration.

Jesus the

Admit

Christ is its theme. It declares him to be the Son of God, sent by the Eternal Father to make known the truth and redeem the race. IIence, the New Testament is-as this term imports-the written will and word of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. his Divinity, or even his truthfulness as a man, and his infallibility follows. He claimed to have come from God. He exclaimed, in high converse with the Eternal Father, and in view of approaching torture and death, "O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the Glory which I had with thee before the world was." He declared of himself, "The Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth." "Whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak."

No being has ever appeared on the earth claiming the same sublime pre-eminence that Jesus did. "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness." These impressive utterances might be multiplied. They prove that Jesus claimed in the highest sense to be the infallible Teacher of men. And it will be admitted that such infallibilitysuch lofty and plenary inspiration-was essential to his work as the Redeemer of men and the Restorer of this earth from the ruins of the fall.

But then it is certain that Jesus did not complete the Revelation of the Gospel. He finished his sacrificial work; but he did not finish his communications to men. He said, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth." Now, as it is proved beyond all doubt that Jesus left the

revelation of his will unfinished, and as it is evident that the closing portion of that revelation is as important as its beginning, therefore it was necessary that the teachings of the chosen Apostles should be as infallible as the teachings of Jesus himself.

Jesus began the revelation personally-as the Divine, infallible Teacher-the light of the world. He left it unfinished, to be completed in its most important parts by his chosen and commissioned embassadors. This could not be done by ignorant, erring men. Surely, in the very nature of the case, the writers of the New Testament needed the same infallible guidance in completing the Gospel revelation that Jesus possessed for its beginning.

Jesus promised them his infallibility, or inspiration. He told them that they should receive "power from on high;" thať it should not be they that spoke, "but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you;" "For he [the Holy Spirit] shall receive of mine and show it unto you."

And then the writers of the New Testament claimed this inspiration. They claimed to speak, not in the words that man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; and so Paul declared, "I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached of me is not after man; for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The writings of each of the inspired penmen are strongly characteristic of the previous surroundings, culture and sympathies of the writer. So that, while each book shows upon its surface the human origin of its composition, there is manifest, through all the pages of the book, the Divine origin of its revelations as THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD.

CHAPTER III.

THE WRITERS OF THE BOOK.

The apostles who were chosen to authorship were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter and Jude, sometimes called Judas (not Iscariot).

Divine wisdom has provided a fourfold biography of the Redecmer of men. The three first named writers are called the Synoptists. They differ from John in this, that while they give a simple synopsis or concise record of Christ's works and words, John gives at length the discourses of Jesus with a view to meet the errors which had originated in the churches in his later day.

It has been supposed that the Gospel of Matthew is the only purely original one; and that Mark and Luke either knew the work of Matthew or had access to some common documents. The circumstances of their writing are entirely unknown; but we can well suppose that they used or compared their own memories with any narratives then existing among the disciples.

There are some peculiarities cominon to the three.

(1.) Each keeps himself in the background and presents simply the figure of Christ before us. They stand quite aside, so that one may look only on them of whom they wrote.

(2.) Then the figure and story of Jesus are wholly unique. While we cannot help feeling that the Jesus of the Gospels is a fellow man, we are still impressed that we have never knownhave never heard of —a being like him or a life like his. These writers could not have created such an ideal figure. All is real, yet all is too perfect, too extraordinary, for a human reality.

(3.) In the writings of these three evangelists there are, in detail, just those diversities of statement which always distinguish different narratives of the same events. The three succeed in presenting one being. We have nothing to reconcile in the pre