November 1928
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ment than respecting that of Shakespeare. The Alexan drine manuscript is of the date of the Council of Nice, in the year 325 of the Christian era. T estim on ials F or N ew T estam ent More than one hundred accepted writers, beginning with the latter part of the first century of the Christian era, testify to the New Testament writings and their gen uineness. Justin Martyr, one of the most ancient, died at the beginning of the second century. The pagan his torian Tacitus records that the Christians in Rome during the reign of Nero, in the year 64 of the Christian era, and during the lifetime of the apostles, were already, to quote his own words, “a vast multitude.” Pliny, in the year 102 of the Christian era, in the next generation after Tacitus, speaks of their great numbers in the remote province of Bithynia, and the Christian writers from the year 150 to 180, described their brethren as thickly scat tered over the whole known world, both civilized! and bar barian, and stated the use of the New Testament univer sally in their churches. Historical writers whose author ity is unchallenged, testify to the books of the four Evan gelists from the beginning of the first century. Now, what would the judges of our courts say to such nearly cotemporaneous testimony as the foregoing? That is, the testimony of historical writers, whether Pagan or Christian ? There is a well-known principle in respect to legal evi dence called “Judicial Notice.” Courts take what is termed judicial notice of all matters of public history without the production of evidence; also of inodes of travel and trans portation; the general course of business; the meaning of current phrases, the geography and history of countries, ancient and modern; their language and principal authors. In other words, they take judicial notice of whatever is common knowledge in the world. Besides, in considering the genuineness of the New Testament documents, our law courts would look not only at the corroborative circumstances to which I. have just referred, but also to other circumstances to which I will now allude; namely, the general acceptance of their appar ent authorship; the character of the age in which they pur port to be written; the apparent purpose of their authors; the language in which they wrote; and their confirmation by contemporary writers, as already referred to. C orroborative C ircumstances As respects the authorship of these writings, they have been attributed, from the beginning, to the writers whose names are attached to them as uniformly as “The Retreat of the Ten Thousand” has been ascribed to Xenophon, or “The Lives of the Caesars” to Suetonius. There is a substantial agreement between the contents of the gospels, the Acts, and the epistles concerning the life, teachings, miracles, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ ; an agreement far greater than we find in the historians of England touching English history. The age in which these documents were put forth was not by any means a mythological age. It was an age in which written records were universally kept, and in which historical literature flourished. It was the age of great historians, such as Livy, Plutarch, Valerius Maximus, and Tacitus. But the New Testament writers did not aim to be his torical writers. They describe no political conditions. They simply set forth the public life and ministry of Christ and the propagation of His teachings. The Pagan writers themselves, near the time of the New Testament, namely, some of those above mentioned, and also Juvenal,
Trajan, Adrian and others, the authenticity of whose works has never been disputed, speak of the existence and teachings of the historic Christ, and confirm the incidental allusions to the civil history of the times contained, in the New Testament, and do this in a manner which even the Germans, Strauss and DeWette, and the other German skeptics admit, although they argue the contrary from the silence of other cotemporary writers. It is true that many of his cotemporaries make no men tion of Christ or His disciples. But the historian Thucy dides makes no allusion to several great men who lived in
The Volume Divine B y W il l ia . u .L u f f It is the Nation’s Volume! Therefore kings Were sent to it, as to eternal springs O f law, and light, and liberty. Blest realm That has this Royal Pilot at its helm! I t is the city Volume! Business men, Who trade along its lines none can condemn : They have clean hands, and deal in righteousness, And can look up, and ask their God to bless. I t is the homestead Volume! Round the hearth, I t scatters light: and on the daily path Strews fragrant flowers o f joy, and peace, and love, Until our homes grow like the Home above. I t is the children’s Volume, blessing youth! It is the young man’s Volume! Here is Truth! In prime o f life, in sickness, and in age, All may find help who read the sacred page. I t is the sinner’s Volume! Only here, A guilty conscience, trembling and in fear, Can find a Saviour ready to forgive,. Dying sin’s death that death’s condemned may live.
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