or present.  The Bible’s authority is strictly religious; it has to do solely with God and man’s life with man in Him; and, when read in the light of its culmination in Christ, it approves itself to the Spirit of Christ within Christians as a correct record of their experiences of God, and the mighty inspiration to such experiences.  Surely it is no belittling limitation to say of this unique book that it is an authority only on God.  Every fundamental question of life is answered, every essential need of the soul is met, when God is found, and becomes our Life, our Home.

And with such self-evidencing authority in the books of the Bible, it is a question of minor importance who were their authors and when they were written—­the questions which the literary historical criticism undertakes to answer.  Luther put the matter conclusively when he said in his vigorous fashion:  “That which does not teach Christ is not apostolic, though Peter or Paul should have said it; on the contrary that which preaches Christ is apostolic, even if it should come from Judas, Annas, Pilate and Herod.”  Some persons have been greatly troubled in the last generation by being told that scholars did not consider the conventionally received authorships of many of the books of the Bible correct, but thought that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, or David the Psalms, or Solomon the Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, or Isaiah and Jeremiah more than parts of the books that bear their names, or John and Peter all the writings ascribed to them.  We are not to judge of writings by their authors, but by their intrinsic value.  Suppose Shakespeare did not write more than a fraction of the plays associated with his name, or that he wrote none of them at all; the plays themselves remain as valuable as ever; their interpretation of life in its tragedy and humor, its heights and its depths, is as true as it ever was.  Whatever views of their composition or authorship may be reached by literary experts, the Scriptures possess exactly the same spiritual power they have always possessed.  The Lord has been “our dwelling-place in all generations,” whether Moses or some other psalmist penned that line; and Jesus is the bread of life, whether the apostle John or some other disciple whom Jesus loved records that experience.  Scholars may make the meaning of the Scriptures much plainer by their searching studies; and they must be encouraged to investigate as minutely and rigorously as they can.  To be fearful that the Bible cannot stand the test of the keenest study, is to lack faith in its divine vitality.  To found a “Bible Defence League” is as unbelieving as to inaugurate a society for the protection of the sun.  Like the sun the Bible defends itself by proving a light to the path of all who walk by it.  The only defence it needs is to be used; and the only attack it dreads is to be left unread.