The costliness of writing materials gave rise to a peculiar usage.  From the leaves of an ancient work the original writing was erased, more or less perfectly.  They were then employed as the material for another work, the latter being written over the former.  Such manuscripts are called palimpsests—­written again after erasure.  The original writing, which is very often the sacred text, can in general be deciphered, especially by the aid of certain chemical applications.  Some of our most precious manuscripts are of this character.

The existing manuscripts of the New Testament are of two kinds. First, the uncial, that is, those written in capital letters.  Here belong all the most ancient and valuable.  The writing is generally in columns, from two to four to a page; sometimes in a single column.  There is no division of the text into words; the marks of interpunction are few and simple; and till the seventh century there were no accents, and breathings only in special cases. Secondly, the cursive, or those written in running-hand, with division of the text into words, capitals only for initial letters, accents, breathings, etc., and often with many contractions.  This is the common form of manuscripts after the tenth century, the uncial being retained for some ages afterwards only in books designed for use in the church service.  In both the uncial and the cursive manuscripts, each century has its peculiar style of writing.  From this, as well as from the quality of the materials, expert judges can determine the age of a given manuscript with a good degree of accuracy.

The details pertaining to the form of ancient manuscripts, their number, character, etc., belong to the department of textual criticism.  The above brief notices are given to prepare the way for a statement of the evidence that we have the gospel narratives, as also the other books of the New Testament, without corruption in the form in which they were originally written. See the PLATES at the beginning of this book.

3.  Of the autograph manuscripts proceeding immediately from the inspired authors we find no trace after the apostolic age.  Here, as elsewhere, the wisdom of God has carefully guarded the church against a superstitious veneration for the merely outward instruments of redemption.  We do not need the wood of the true cross that we may have redemption through the blood of Christ; nor do we need the identical manuscripts that proceeded from the apostles and their companions, since we have the contents of these manuscripts handed down to us without corruption in any essential particular.  This appears from various considerations.

First. Several hundred manuscripts of the gospels, or of portions of them, (to confine our attention at present to these,) have been examined, two of them belonging to the fourth century and two, with some fragments, to the fifth.  All these, though written in different centuries and coming from widely different regions, contain essentially the same text.  In them, not one of the great facts or doctrines of the gospel history is mutilated or obscured.