And remember especially this, that they were selected out by no miracle, that they rest on no formal decision or sentence of Church or Council, or pope or saint, nay, not even of the Blessed Lord Himself; for long before He came, for centuries and centuries there they stood, testifying of Him, cherished and reverenced as a message that had come from above "at sundry times and in divers manners". All study of their history shows that their acceptance rested on no decision of any external authority. They were accepted as of Divine origin for many generations before they were gathered into any fixed collection. "The Church", said Luther, "cannot give more force or authority to a book than it has in itself. A Council cannot make that to be Scripture which in its own nature is not Scripture". It is true that the great Synagogue, or their official descendants, collected the Old Testament Canon of Scripture. Yes, but when? Somewhere about the time of our Lord, when the books had been for ages recognised as of God. It is true that the Christian Church collected the New Testament writings into a Bible, and arrived at a decision concerning certain books the authority of which had been in debate. Yes, but when? After they had been for 300 years accepted as the God-given guide of the Church. _Evidently it was not their being collected into a Bible that made them of authority, but rather the fact of their possessing authority made them be collected into a Bible_. 3.--Again, I repeat the question, what gave them that authority? And there seems no possible answer but this, that they possessed it of themselves. They commanded the position they held by their own power. Men's moral sense and reason combined to establish them. They appealed by their own instrinsic worth to the God-given moral faculty, and the response to that appeal through all the ages since is in reality the main foundation of the Bible's position. Look at the Old Testament. If we at the present day are asked why we receive it as inspired, we usually reply that we receive it on the authority of our Lord and His apostles. They accepted it as the Word of God, and handed it on to us with their official approval of it. Well, but why was it accepted before their day without any such formal sanction? How did men come to believe and obey as Divinely inspired the words of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and the rest? Except in the case of Moses, there were no miracles or portents; no external voice from heaven to command men's allegiance. They were not established on their Divine supremacy by any single authority. Why then were their utterances accepted?