Accordingly, it was originally included in the New Testament, and for nearly four hundred years made a part of it. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament in the world, supposed to have been written in the fourth century, contains the Epistle of Barnabas; and one reason for believing the manuscript so old, is that it _does_ contain it. This manuscript was found by the celebrated German critic Tischendorf, in 1859, in the convent of St. Catharine, at Mount Sinai. Why, then, is not this Epistle of Barnabas printed in our New Testament? Whoever reads it will easily see the reason. It is because it does not deserve to be there; it does not have the marks of a high inspiration; it is made up in a great degree of quotations from the Old Testament, of imitations of St. Paul, and of allegories. It evidently dropped out of the Bible by its own weight. It had every opportunity offered it to become a part of sacred Scripture; but being tried by Paul’s test, it was found not to be profitable for doctrine, reproof, or anything else, and so the copyists saved their time, labor, and vellum by leaving it out. It was received on testimony, and discarded after experience. It had authority at first, because of its supposed author; it lost it afterwards, by means of its empty self. This, then, is the authority of the writers of the Bible. It is the authority of inspired men—men who have been into spiritual regions where most men have not gone, and seen what most men have not seen. It is not infallibility. They are capable of mistakes and error. Their being in the Bible is only so far a proof that they are inspired, as it gives the testimony of the Church that it has found the proofs of inspiration in their writings. The Christian community has followed the apostolic direction, and tried the spirits whether they were of God or not, and has come to the conclusion that these New Testament writers have the marks of inspiration. For you will observe that the present code of the New Testament was gradually formed, and that not by the votes of councils or the decisions of bishops, but by the feelings of the Christian community. An inward instinct, and no external authority, presided over the collection of the Scriptures, gradually dropping out some books (like Barnabas, Hermas, and the Revelation of Peter), and taking in others. So the Christian Church says to us, of the New Testament, “Here is a book concerning which we testify that the writings in it are profitable for doctrine; that its writers have superior knowledge in regard to spiritual things; that they are inspired men, who have been taken up into a region where most men have never gone, and seen what most men have never seen, and therefore _know_ more than most of us about spiritual truth.”