When I had read it all I knew less about the authorship of the book than when I began. But the discrepancies between it and the synoptics loomed large and menacing. I will not go into details concerning these. The reader can easily see them for himself. But on the question of inspiration I was about at my wits' end. Here I was at the very vital part of the Christian religion, as I had been taught it and was trying to teach it to others. I have already told how I passed up the matter of the inspiration of the Old Testament as being of little importance under the Christian dispensation. And now every prop was falling from under me in regard to the inspiration of the New. If the very records of the life and teachings of the Christ himself, upon which the whole fabric of Christianity rested, were now shown to be discordant and irreconcilable in their contents, and some of them very doubtful in their authorship; with it the whole doctrine of a divine and infallible revelation would have to go. I was dumfounded. Was it possible that all this upon which I had staked my whole life, and had been preaching for years, was a mere fiction? It seemed to be so, if the Bible was not divinely inspired, a true revelation from God, and infallibly correct. But how could it _all_ be true, when it told so many different and conflicting stories about the same thing? Was not God the very essence of truth? Then how could He miraculously reveal one thing to Matthew, another and entirely different one to Luke, and still another and different one to John, all about the same thing? And yet, that in many instances this was true, I could no longer doubt. Even tho these discrepancies might not go to the essence of Christianity as a system of religion; nor materially affect its fundamental doctrines; yet they did go to the very foundations upon which it was based,--a divine and infallible revelation from heaven. Take this away and orthodox Christianity is not left a leg to stand on; and I knew it. But we will hurry on thru this subject. The authorship of the Acts of the Apostles was attributed without serious question to Luke. All the Epistles usually attributed to Paul are conceded to him by our author, except that to the Hebrews, while some critics reject the Pauline authorship of any of the Pastoral Epistles,--those to Timothy, Titus and Philemon. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is admitted to be unknown, and its date uncertain, tho it existed in the church quite early. The Epistle of James is admitted to be doubtful; and especially as to which of several men of this name might have written it. It is admitted that it could not have been written by the Apostle James, as he was put to death at Jerusalem long before the epistle was known. As has already been seen, it was rejected by many of the Fathers; and even Martin Luther dubbed it "an epistle of straw."