FIRST FORMATION OF THE CANON.

14. DURING the first fifteen years after the death of our Lord the Church was brought into existence, grew and was nourished by the oral preaching of the truth, and by the scriptures of the Old Testament, explained either by themselves or by the teaching of the apostles and evangelists — “God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will,” (Heb. ii. 4; 2 Pet. i. 21.)

15. The apostles and evangelists, while preaching the Word to the Churches, “by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,” constantly appealed, as their Master had done, to the already closed canon of the Old Testament. They required their disciples to study it incessantly; and declared it “able to make the man of God perfect, wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Jesus Christ, and thoroughly furnished unto all good works,” (2 Tim. iii. 15-17.)

16. It was not till fifteen years after the ascension of our Saviour that the old canon of the “oracles of God,” which had been closed for four hundred years, was re-opened to receive the earliest writing of the New Testament. I mean the epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians; for there is every reason to believe that the Gospel of Mark, and even that of Matthew, did not precede these; and that the Gospels of Luke and John followed them after a very long interval. Thus, for two or three years, the sacred canon of the New Testament consisted merely of these two epistles, which Paul, aided by Silas and Timotheus, had written, about the year 48, to the infant church of Thessalonica.

17. It is, therefore, very probably owing to the circumstance that these two epistles were to commence the new collection of “oracles of God,” that the apostle from the first took such pains to intimate to the Church their divine authority. He “charges them by the Lord,” to keep them, to study them, and to spread copies of them. He solemnly enjoins them, by invoking God’s awful name, to cause this earliest portion of Scripture to be made known and read in all the churches of Christ. “I charge you,” says he, in conclusion, (ὁρκίζω ὑμᾶς τόν Κύριον,) “I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read to all the holy brethren,” (1 Thess. v. 27.) This portion of Scripture he addressed to a church that his Gospel had — reached, “not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost,” (1 Thess. i. 5;) and he carefully reminds them that the word he had brought to them was that of God; and thanks God that they had received it, “not as the word of man, but, as it is in reality, the word of God.”

18. It was during the sixteen or seventeen years that elapsed from the appearance of these first two books of the New Testament (in 48), and the death of Paul (in 64 or 65), that nearly all the other scriptures of the New Testament were written; at least the twenty books we shall by and by have occasion to mention as the first canon; that is, the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the first thirteen epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of Peter, and _ the First of John.

19. It was at a later period, that is, towards the end of the first century, that the other seven books of the New Testament were put forth, with the exception of the Epistle of James, which must have been written about the year 61; as, according to the historian Josephus, James was stoned to death during the troubles that preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, that is, immediately after the death of the governor Festus, and while the arrival of Albinus in Judea was still looked for.¹

20. Thus the whole canon of the scriptures of the New Testament was commenced and completed during the latter half of the first century. It was during this period that the Church, already formed and unceasingly extending, reached the extremities of the earth, through the incomparable labours of Paul, Peter, John, Thomas, and other apostles, as well as of so many other witnesses, whose names, unknown to us, are recorded in heaven.

21, It is, therefore, necessary we should distinctly understand that the primitive Church, during her militant and triumphant march through the first half-century of her existence, saw her New Testament canon forming in her hand, as a nosegay is gradually formed in the hand of a lady walking through plots of flowers with the proprietor of the garden by her side, As she advances, the latter presents to her flower after flower, till she finds herself in possession of an entire bunch. And, just as the nosegay attracts admiring attention before it is filled up, and as soon as the few first flowers have been put together, so the New Testament canon began to exist for the Christian Church from the moment the earliest portions of inspired Scriptures had been put into her hands.

In the same manner, under the Old Testament in the time of David, a thousand years before the apostles, the Church of Israel already possessed a sacred canon, consisting of seven or eight books, and called it her Law, her divine and perfect Law, though two-thirds of the Old Testament were still wanting. “The Law,” she already exclaimed, “is a light to my feet; it refreshes my soul; I talk of it the whole day long.” In the same way, also, five hundred years before David, and in the time of Moses, the Church of _ Israel possessed her sacred canon, and expressed herself thus: — “Happy art thou, O Israel! who is like unto thee, O people, saved of the Lord! for this Law is not a vain thing for us, it is our life,” (Deut. xxxiii. 29, xxxil. 47.)

22. The Church, at each successive period, was responsible for the books God had already given her, and not for those He might afterwards give. At all times she received from Him those she required; and at all times she had reason to say, with David, “The law of the Lord is perfect.”

23. It will easily be perceived how important it is, for the confirming of our faith, that the New Testament, instead of having been communicated all at once by the Founder of our religion Himself personally recording His acts and His revelations, should have emanated from Him successively during the space of half-a-century, in a series of twenty-seven writings, the productions of eight different individuals, separated from each other by great distances of place, and distinguished from each other by circumstances the most dissimilar; some of them learned, others unlettered; some in Judea, others in Rome; some writing only ten or fifteen years after the death of their Master, others fifty years after that event; some of them having been personally strangers to Him, one of them even His most bitter persecutor; while some of them had been among His most devoted and assiduous friends. The result of all this diversity is, that the harmony with which all, notwithstanding, reveal to us His life, His character, His origin, and His doctrines, — the unchanging agreement they maintain on subjects the most transcendent, as well as in expounding duties the most completely misunderstood; in a word, that marvellous and deep unity in their teaching stands forth both more striking and more majestic than it otherwise could have done.

No wonder, then, that the Sacred Volume — fitted to charm every people, even the most savage, — responding everywhere to the wants of man, and adapting itself through every age to every stage of civilisation — should everywhere elevate the human character, and produce, under all circumstances, effects that no other teaching could ever achieve; changing the affections, subduing the will, giving birth to heroism in every form, and civilising in the space of a few years nations the rudest: as, in the earliest periods of its existence, it shewed itself able to overthrow, in the most refined regions of the world, idolatries whose origin was lost in the night of antiquity, renewing in its wonderful progress the face of the world,

1) Antiq., xx., c. 8.