I here recalled a small book I had read some years before on Inspiration,--the author I have forgotten,--but I remember the three leading reasons for the inspiration of the Bible which he gave, and which, with my limited knowledge at the time, seemed satisfactory. These were: Tradition, Necessity and Success. The tradition of the Jews as to the authenticity and inspiration of the books of the Old Testament: it was argued, that whatever may at this time be the limits of our knowledge concerning these books, the ancient Jewish Rabbis _knew_ just what they were, and if they had not every one been the word of God, these Rabbis would have known it, and they never would have been in the canon. The same doctrine of tradition was applied to the Church Fathers concerning the books of the New Testament. But I had here learned that these Church Fathers were by no means agreed as to these books. I began to see now that the same argument might be applied with equal force to the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, or the Koran. The argument from necessity was based upon the assumption that man in his fallen and sinful state was by nature wholly unable to discover anything about God, or the means of his redemption. Therefore a divine revelation was necessary to meet man's needs in this case; and the Bible meets this necessity. Therefore the Bible is a divine revelation. But I here recalled that the only evidence we have of man's original perfection and fall is in the Bible itself; and that this line of argument must ultimately drive us back to the mere _assumption_ of the facts upon which this supposed "divine necessity" was based. The argument based upon success was that Christ and Christianity were not only the fulfillment of Old Testament promise and prophecy; but that it never could have made the success in the world that it has _if it had not been of divine origin, the result of divine revelation_. I was prepared at this time to look with some favor on the argument drawn from "promise and prophecy"; but if success was a true test I wondered if the same argument would not apply with equal force to Buddhism, with a third more followers than Christianity, or to Mohammedanism with half as many in a much shorter time.