we have quoted, references to the New Testament might be. drawn out in an unending chain. It will be perceived that regarding the different purposes designed by the different writers of the sacred records, the fact that these records were widely scattered in various directions, as they were addressed, the continuance of verbal information concerning the Apostles, we said regarding these and many more particulars, it would appear that time was necessary to bring the Scriptures into such notice, as to admit of their being familiarly referred to. We observe likewise, that in these quotations from, and references to them, one generation blends its own testimony with that of another generation. He who, in the year 116, speaks of the Gospels as read and held in high honor, of course speaks what he had been taught by his father or teacher, and thus carries us back to the generation before his own. We have endeavored to concentrate the force of this testimony upon the year 150, a period too early for any fraud to have been then practised, and sufficiently near to the time of the Apostles to satisfy every mind, as to the validity of the authority then attributed to the New Testament records. At the year 175, when the aged men might have remembered apostolical times, and when those in later life might have owed their Christian education to the disciples and Apostles, we find the Gospels and Epistles treated with the most sacred reverence, referred to as the bulwarks of the faith, quoted as a final appeal, and enforced upon coming generations with the most solemn counsels of the original believers. Whence came this reverence, this confidence in the records, this willingness to appeal and to allow an appeal to them, this transmitted solemnity of the trust? It came not from supposition or mere belief of their authority, but from a knowledge of it, a clear demonstration of their apostolic origin, which never was questioned by heretic or infidel, till the Christian church had faced the storms of more than a thousand years.

The other question which we proposed to ourselves was, as to the genuineness of those records, that is, whether we have, unaltered, the very writings which we know were received so heartily and universally. Does the New Testament, as we read it, contain essentially, without adulteration, addition, or loss, the very productions of the sacred writers? We may find in the arguments, which we have just pursued, the main evidence to satisfy us on this further question. The unbeliever or doubter

will say, admitting that this long chain of authors, reaching to the very lifetime of the Evangelists and Apostles, does quote with reverence their writings, how do we know that those writings have not been grossly corrupted during the ignorance, the havoc, and the heresies of long time? Christian ministers and writers have often shown not too much earnestness, but too much anxiety on this point. If a bold and presuming skeptic tells us, that we can have no certainty, whether we read the Gospels and Epistles as they were written, we shall not distress ourselves, because he uses his tongue to make an unsupported assertion. He may make the assertion if he pleases, but after he has made it he must prove it, and it will be time enough for us to entertain it when he advances some proof of it. For completeness sake, however, we may just mention the arguments, which we have laid up for defence.

We have seen, that in the year 175, or to take an even date, in the year 200, we have full and explicit testimony of the existence of the Christian Scriptures, of their familiar quotation, and of the solemn, not to say superstitious reverence, with which they were regarded. There are known to exist now about 670 manuscript copies of the whole, or portions of the New Testament, in the original Greek, found in different parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. There are also manuscripts of early translations of those Scriptures from Greek, into eleven other languages. Besides, there are scattered over the commentaries, homilies, expositions, and other works of early Christian writers, such abundant and repeated quotations from the New Testament, that if we only knew the order in which to place them, we might make a New Testament from those works. From these Greek manuscripts, these translated manuscripts, and these quotations in other works, we draw some thousand of repetitions of each sentence in the New Testament. In comparing these together, we detect variations between a few words, and a few letters. These trivial and unimportant errors, which are rectified by comparison, originated in three ways; from slips of the pen in writing, from erroneous translations of one word by another, and from a quotation having been made from memory, instead of from a reference to the text. Now before the contents of the New Testament had been published a hundred years, errors of this kind attracted notice, and we find them spoken of, and censured. So great was the reverence for the records, that even these slight mistakes were deplored. Can we

you

that wilful errors would have been permitted? Just as at the present time, there is scarcely a copy of the Bible free from errors of the press, or of translation, while a wilful corruption of it would be absolutely impossible. Now we say, that this reverence universally attached to the Christian Scriptures, at the very first mention which we find of them, was given to those Scriptures because they were believed to be the works of inspired men. Their purity and authority, which made them to be reverenced, would guard their purity from corruption, and secure their authority from being lessened. Would our fathers have mutilated the Christian Scriptures? No! Would their fathers? No, nor theirs, nor the tenth nor the twentieth generation before them. Why should we think that we are more anxious about the integrity of those records, than the very men to whom we refer as first honoring and cherishing them more than their lives?

Would they with one hand write their testimony to the Scriptures, and with the other falsify them? Would they march to the stake to attest their devotion, and after having just corrupted the pillar and foundation of their children's trust? The supposition is monstrous. It is not for one instant to be imagined that those, who from the year 100 to 200 first attest those Scriptures, were at the same time corrupting them. And if they did not corrupt them, who did? In the first place, who would corrupt them? Who could cherish the purpose of going over the earth and buying up those manuscripts to tamper with them, or take his own copy and mutilate it? Surely no believer would do this. There was no object which he could gain by it. It would have been a most thankless task. Perhaps it may be said the heretic or the infidel would have been willing to do it. Perhaps so; but could they have done it? We ask a second question -Who could have corrupted the Scriptures of the New Testament? All those manuscripts, translations, and quotations, to which we have referred, are essentially the same, therefore they must have come from the same originals. We account for this agreement by the integrity of the early Christians, who, though divided by land, by language, and by controversies, all reverenced the Scriptures. Now if you say that any one could corrupt those records, you must show that he could have done so before the year 200; for after that date it was manifestly impossible to introduce such corruptions as would appear in all the copies. But at the year VOL. XXXIV -3D s. XVI. NO. II.

26

200, the only time when such a general corruption could have been made, there were by the lowest computation of known facts, three millions of Christians in the Roman Empire alone. Allowing one copy of the Scriptures to every one hundred Christians, there would have been 30,000 copies to have been corrupted in the very faces of their owners.

No records of ancient times can produce such overwhelming evidence for their authorship and integrity as the New Testament Scriptures.

G. E. E.

/ CLERICAL ECONOMICS.

- to

Two pleasant little volumes have lately fallen into our hands, of which we will give some account. They relate to what we may term the economics of the clergyman's life the lesser matters of the law; lesser, however, only in the theological sense; greater in every other. For who will be so much a spiritualist as to deny that the body needs to be fed, and clothed, and sheltered, first of all; that learning, preaching, philosophizing, and even every form of neologism, must be held inferior to the necessities which subject us to the dinner and breakfast table, and the labor which brings the money that covers them with wholesome food. Man is primarily a body, a feeding animal; in quite a secondary sense a thinking, reading, and printing animal; and unless the first class of wants is well looked after, he will do little at thinking, reading, or printing. Yet, though these truths are so very elementary, they are but imperfectly considered, and many clergymen are seen to attend with very little intelligence and thrift, to the duties they imply. It may be very true that where the minister has failed to prosper in his temporalities, it has been because he has devoted himself too exclusively to the spiritualities; he has studied hard and preached well, but has died in poverty, and left behind him a dependent family; he has written sermons by the thousand, has visited faithfully his flock, forgotten neither his Greek nor his Latin, and added German or Chinese, but has

never been able to make both ends of the year meet; has never paid a bill when it was due, and in a word, has never been out from under the harrow.' This self-sacrifice, as some will call it, is very commendable and virtuous, no doubt. Seriously, we give all honor to those, who, if one class of duties is to be neglected and forborne, if to attend to more than one be an absolute impracticability, choose that which concerns the welfare of others the most, their own the least are willing to go halfclad, or half-fed, to relinquish all the little luxuries and indulgences of life, rather than starve their minds for want of books; and unwilling to give their people poor sermons, old or new, because they must needs be abroad in the meadows, with hoe or scythe, that neither the dairy, nor the hay-loft, nor the vegetable bins, nor the pork-barrel may fail of their abundance, whatever else may fail. But what we should be inclined to doubt or deny is, the necessary divorce between the classes of duties in question. We cannot believe that there is any incompatibility between a well appointed, orderly, thriving household, an abundance of the good things of this world, taking our ministers' salaries as they rise, and a faithful discharge of the public functions of the pastor's office. It is owing, we imagine, rather to bad habits, false notions, foolish prejudices, than anything more creditable, that the humble duties of a wise domestic economy are so often foregone, that so many fail to devote the spare hours which fall to every one, especially to the country minister, to the various out-door labors which would give health to the body, and new vigor to the mind, at the same time it lengthened out the salary, and supplied larder and cellar with a larger provision, and of a better quality.

We do not mean to say that there are none who, in the best and wisest manner, to a right discharge of the sacred duties of their great office, add diligence and prudence in the affairs of the family, and manage to large profiting the garden or the farm, the poultry-yard and the pig-stye. There are not wanting among our country ministers men, who for the well arranged economy of their households, for their active industry, their power of accomplishing not only one, but many things, their early rising and late going to bed, their true piety and worldly thrift, their due mingling and proportioning of the things of heaven and earth, their Sunday preachings, their closet studies, and their garden labors, their well furnished minds, and their equally well furnished barns and houses, need not fear