CHAPTER V THE MAKING OF THE CANON THE NEW TESTAMENT A NEW literature sprang into being under the powerful appeal made to the human intellect by the incidents in the life of the Prophet of Nazareth, and much more by the wonderful circumstances of his death and resurrection. No life in history compared with his in thought-producing energy, in soul-arousing power, and the demand for full and formal statement was universal and insistent. Many books were written, some of them prejudiced, onesided, incomplete, unsatisfactory. The evangelist Luke makes this the reason for venturing into the field of literature. He admits that many other accounts had been written, and seems to imply that they are not satisfactory to his mind, so he writes his own account to the honorable gentleman to whom his production is addressed, that he "may know the certainty of the things” wherein he had been instructed. Even the Gospels of Mark and Matthew were not entirely satisfactory to Luke, for they left out certain important teachings of the Master that he thought ought to be recorded. It must be observed that the literary movement was a little slow in starting, the first books of the New Testament not appearing till twenty years after the Lord's ascension. We must also remember that the Christians had a Bible which they highly venerated, and which seemed sufficient for their needs. Saint Paul preached in the synagogues, using the Hebrew Scriptures and making them the source of his material in expounding the kingdom of God as set up by Jesus Christ. In Rome he brought together a great company in his own house, "To whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets." These early Christians were so absorbed and occupied preaching and building the Church of Christ that they had neither time nor strength for writing. We never should have had Saint Paul's great epistles had not God wisely ordered that he should be held in prison those long years when he seemed to be so much needed in the field, that he might have quiet and time for that greatest service of his life in writing those wonderful productions that for two thousand years have been giving light in all the earth. The early Christian writings were mostly produced under the spur of some immediate and pressing necessity. They were addressed to a particular locality, to single individuals, or in response to appeals for counsel. There is no indication or intimation that any one of the writers had the faintest idea that his production would finally find a place in the sacred canon and be held in the same reverence as that which had attached to the Hebrew Scriptures. Greatly as they were appreciated by the Christians of the time, they could not be held in full sanctity till touched by age and with the veneration that finally invested the names of those who had seen the Lord, after they had passed into the fellowship of the church triumphant. There was no intimation while the apostles lived of a purpose to gather together the writings of their age into one volume, to be a part of the sacred canon. That thought was a later development, for while the apostles lived, their public recital of the events worthy of mention in the life of our Lord, and their expositions of his teachings would have precedence over anything they might write, and in the public mind would seem to render unnecessary a written account. Not till their testimony was completed and they were removed would the church awake to the apprehension of the great and enduring value of what they had written. The simplicity and naturalness of that literature, one of its greatest charms, is evidence that it came from the heart with a single purpose and a single aim, with no apprehension of the position to be assigned to it in the future. Only thus could the human mind be absolutely responsive to the motions of the Holy Spirit, when it was wholly absorbed with the one purpose of conveying the truth to a case of need. These writers make no demand that their productions shall be placed in the same category with the Hebrew Scriptures, nor, indeed, do they intimate any concern about the future disposition of them. They left their ministry of writing as their ministry of speech to the providence of God, not knowing which should thrive, "the early or the late sown," the written or the spoken word. They wrote under an inspiration to meet a present need, and it remained for the inspiring Spirit at a later period to indicate to Spirit-filled men the real character and enduring worth of these productions. The apostolical church accepted them as authority for instruction in the facts of Christian history and in the doctrines of Christian faith, but they could not class them with the writings of Moses or the prophets till there was a sufficient lapse of time to invest them with the air of sacredness that naturally falls over the things of the past when we are removed at a sufficient distance from them. From considering them as books of instruction in the facts of history, the principles of faith, and the practical duties of religion, it was |