being truly the word of God. As to the New Testament, we know that, however accurate and trustworthy as a history of the times in which it was composed it may be, yet it could not have had the explicit approval of our Lord, simply because it had not been written and was not completed for about a hundred years after His death and glorious resurrection.

Yet we accept the New Testament as also inspired in just the same authoritative way as we receive the Hebrew writings of the Old Law. And nothing but a divine testimony, such as that of Christ, could assure us sufficiently that in the Sacred Scriptures we have the word of God.

What criterion have we by which to determine precisely what books and parts belong to this collection of Old Testament writings of which Christ speaks as the word of God? What authority have we, moreover, for believing the entire New Testament inspired, since it was written after the time of Christ? If Luther and other reformers, so-called, threw out some portions of the sacred text, by what standard or criterion were they guided? Some have answered that we need not the testimony of Christ or any other equally explicit proof to determine what parts belong to this collection of writings representing the inspired word of God. They hold, with Calvin, that a certain spiritual unction inherent in the Sacred Scriptures determines their source, and produces in the devout reader an interior sensation which gives him an absolute conviction of the truth. But common experience teaches that devout feelings may be produced by books which are not inspired, nay, by positively irreligious books, which appeal to our better sensitive nature in some passages whilst they destroy a proper regard for virtue in others. Moreover, the "absolute conviction of the truth" to be deduced from the reading of the Sacred Scriptures is belied by a similar experience, since various sects draw opposing conclusions from the same texts. As truth cannot contradict itself, and as Christ prayed that His followers all be of one mind, we do not feel safe in admitting mere subjective feeling and judgment as a test of what is God's word.

Therefore we must look for some other criterion. Indeed, if our Lord wished us to accept the Sacred Scriptures, including the New Testament, which was written many years after His time, and for a long time was known only to very much separated portions of the faithful, we may be quite sure that He provided a means, an authoritative and clear method, which would lead us to an unerring conclusion in regard to what is and what is not the inspired word of God. This would be all the more necessary for those who regard the Bible as the principal rule and source of their faith.

It is a well-established historical fact that Christ taught some "new doctrines," as they were called, and that He gave a commission to His followers, which they repeated and carried out at the sacrifice of their lives. There is no obscurity whatever about certain words and precepts given by our Lord, historically recorded by six of His Apostles and by many of His disciples who had heard and seen Him, who honestly and intelligently believed in Him, and who were prepared to die, and in some cases actually did suffer martyrdom for the assertions they made. He bade them teach all nations the things He had taught them. He did not give them a book, as He might have done, nor did He tell them to write books; for some of the Apostles never wrote anything; and of those who did write in later days, some had actually never seen our Lord. Such is the common belief regarding St. Paul, who wrote more than any other of the evangelical writers. St. Luke, in the very opening of his Gospel, tells us that he wrote what had been delivered to him by those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word. Our Lord did not, therefore, give His disciples a book, but He was very explicit in making them understand and feel that He gave them an unerring Spirit, who would be just the same as Himself, verily identical with their living Master and Teacher, Christ, who would abide with them to the end of time. "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." To the consummation of the world? And were they never to die? Were they actually to go, as some believed of St. John, to perpetuate the kingdom of Christ, wandering over the earth until all the nations were converted? Not so. They were to deliver His doctrine to their successors, and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, would watch over it until the end of ages. St. Peter would live, in this sense, forever, and all the opposing forces of error, the mighty gates of hell, would not overcome that Spirit any more than they would triumph over Christ, who had "overcome the world." To St. Peter He said: "To thee I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" "Confirm thou thy brethren." All this was to go on and on, so that every human creature could come into possession of truth through this unerring Spirit that presided over the Christian doctrine. And this perpetual transmission of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who would guide the future teachers and preside over their councils as at the first councils of Antioch and Jerusalem,—this perpetual transmission through a body like the apostolic body, ever living, ever guarded from error, ever triumphant amid humiliations, what else is it but the Church, that glorious heritage of ages, which we recognize through all time in every land, holding every class and condition with the wondrous power of its unity of doctrine and discipline!

Now it is this body, this ever-living and unchanging organism, this grand apostolic tribunal, which Christ established, and without which His mission to men would really have remained incomplete, that tells us that the things which some of the Apostles and some of the disciples wrote for our instruction and edification are inspired by the same holy and infallible Spirit which guided the Apostles in their oral teaching. Not all things were written there, as St. John tells us, but many things which they had taught, and which would keep the people, with whom the Apostles could not be ever present, in mind of that doctrine. The written things were not intended to replace the spoken word of doctrinal jurisdiction, for the evangelical teaching of the spoken word was to go on to the end; besides, there were many who could not read, and many who might listen but would not read. Furthermore, there would be need of a living apostolic tribunal, since a written doctrine, like a written law, is liable to various and sometimes contradictory interpretations. We have constitutions and laws, but we need judges and courts to decide the meaning and application, and if it were not that men forget the order of justice, or are too remote from the centres of jurisdiction, we should not need any written laws at all. Communities may be governed by a wise superior without any written laws, and in no case does the written law dispense with the necessity of a discretionary living authority. It is quite evident that in the matter of truth God wished His Apostles to use all the instruments by which that truth might be safely and rightly communicated, and thus the written word was added to the living teaching which the Holy Ghost was ever to direct and safeguard.

I repeat: Christ did not give His disciples a book, but a living, infallible spirit, abiding with them to the end of time, as He said; and since the Apostles were not to remain on earth to the end of the world, what else could our Lord have meant but that others would take their place on the same conditions, with the same prerogatives! That He wished and said this is written over and over again in the sacred volume, and by men who, if they had held this grand trust only for themselves, would have had every reason to say so. But they state the contrary. St. Peter ordains St. Paul; St. Paul sends Timothy and Titus to the new converts on the same conditions, bidding them to preserve intact the grace that is in them "through the imposition of hands." And the