Page:A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (7th edition, 1896).djvu/70

 2 With this view it will be necessary to take into account the intellectual and doctrinal development which was realized in the early Church. The books which are the divine record of Apostolic doctrine cannot be fitly considered apart from the societies in which the doctrine was embodied. A mere series of quotations can convey only an inadequate notion of the real extent and importance of the early testimonies to the genuineness and authority of the New Testament. Something must be known of the nature and object of the first Christian literature—of the possible frequency of Scriptural references in such fragments of it as survive—of the circumstances and relations of the primitive Churches, before it is fair to assign any negative value to the silence or ignorance of individual witnesses, or to decide on the positive worth of the evidence which can be brought forward.

The question of the Canon of Holy Scripture has assumed at the present day a new position in Theology. The Bible can no longer be regarded merely as a common storehouse of controversial weapons, or an acknowledged exception to the rules of literary criticism. Modern scholars, from various motives, have distinguished its constituent parts, and shewn in what way each was related to the peculiar circumstances of its origin. Christianity has gained by the issue; for it is an unspeakable advantage that the Books of the New Testament are now seen to be organically united with the lives of the Apostles: that they are recognised as living monuments, reared in the midst of struggles within and without by men who had seen Christ, stamped with the character of their age, and inscribed with the dialect which they spoke: that they are felt to be a product as well as a source of spiritual life. Their true harmony can only be realized after a perception of their distinct