dence might have been given if we had not feared overtaxing of the reader's patience. It will be observed that there is here no mention about a determination of the books that should belong to the New Testament by any council, conference, or other ecclesiastical assembly of the church. This is for the simple and sufficient reason that there never was any such action. The common spiritual consciousness of the church settled that question through three hundred years of development, and from that decision there is no appeal. In the sense in which the word used to be employed, there is not, and there never was, a canon of the New Testament. We use the word only in an accommodated sense.

CHAPTER VII

THE APOCRYPHA

THERE can be no fair and thorough discussion of the making of the Bible that does not take account of the Apocrypha, which has been held, and is still held by many, as a true and legitimate part of Holy Scripture. The Bible is not the clear-cut product of a recognized authority, the exact boundaries of which may be determined with mathematical accuracy; but it is, rather, a clear stream flowing through muddy waters, the margins of which are bordered with a mixed condition that shade off into that with which it has nothing in common. The literary impulse that grew stronger as the life of the race deepened and broadened, under the stimulating influence of the great truths of revelation, was very active in the stirring period between Malachi and the coming of our Lord. Some of the productions of that period seem quite up to the plane of inspiration in moral and spiritual elevation, while others are trivial and worthless. In

drawing the line between inspired and uninspired, both in the Old and in the New Testament, some books were very near the line on both sides, some barely winning, and others as narrowly failing of recognition.

The books of the Apocrypha have held a semisacred position through all history. They have been held by many as equal in inspiration and authority to the other books of the Old Testament, but a still larger number have refused to concede this much to them, while holding them of great value for instruction in the history of Israel and for edification. They are permeated with the devotional spirit that characterizes all Hebrew literature, they maintain the high ethical standard set up in the Old Testament, and have the same insistence upon supreme loyalty to Jehovah. They seem to be the product of spiritually minded rather than of Spirit-guided men; at least this was the judgment of those who determined the Hebrew canon.

In order to accuracy and clearness of thought it is well here to state that the literature of that period between Malachi and Christ was divided into two parts:

first, the books that we include in the Apocrypha; and, second, the books known as apocalyptic. The first were historical and practical, the second prophetical in form without prophetic inspiration, and more given to the portrayal of disasters than to the unfolding of the glories of the coming kingdom of God. Saint Jude recognizes the truthfulness of one passage at least in the book of Enoch, which is one of the apocalyptic books, but no strong claim has ever been made for the recognition of these books as inspired.

The books of the Apocrypha, which approach so near to inspiration as to have a kind of halo about them in our minds, are, First and Second Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Remainder of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasses, and First and Second Maccabees. The first point to fix in our minds concerning these books is that they never were admitted into the Hebrew Bible; that volume closed with Malachi.

But to understand that period and the

religious influence acquired by these books we must look beyond the established Hebrew communion. There was at that time a large, thrifty, enterprising Hebrew population in all the trading centers of the world. Two influences were responsible for this: first, the captives carried away to Babylon and into Persia never all returned to Palestine. Many of them grew strong and influential in the lands to which they were carried, and found it to their interests and agreeable to their tastes to remain; second, the opportunities of traffic and business in such enterprising cities as Antioch, Corinth, and Alexandria drew many of the most enterprising Hebrews away from their native land for the better conditions offered. In all these commercial centers the Greek language was in general use, and where the Greek language went, Greek arts, ideas, and methods of life naturally followed. The Hebrew element in these communities was touched and modified by these influences. Saul of Tarsus was brought up in such a community, and, strict Jew as he was, his whole life shows the influence of this en