After books secured their place in the authorized list of the Jews, they had still to contest to keep their place. As late as the first century of the Christian era, debate was frequent. Life was slow to render its decision. There was no hasty authority. The final judgment was rendered by the experience of a race. When Eck reminded Martin Luther that the church had decided what books should go into the canon and that Luther must accept a quotation from Second Maccabees as authoritative, the great Reformer made reply, "The church cannot give more authority or force to a book than it has in itself. A council cannot make that be Scripture which in its own nature is not Scripture." So it came to pass that in due season the freed religious consciousness of the church took certain apocryphal books from the Old Testament canon. That consciousness seemed to feel a difference in spiritual power between the Apocrypha and the other portions of the Old Testament. Life was still coming to the polls in order that it, far more than any stately council, should elect the true Word of God. This same process of selection went on in relation to the New Testament. The early Christians started with no New Testament whatsoever. Their Bible was the Old Testament. We do not find any warrant for saying that they expected to make additions to the Bible. Jesus came first. Then the Gospels and Epistles came as natural consequences. The early Christians, as we shall later see, had received the very purpose and climax of Revelation, because they had received Christ. But the Gospels and Epistles which grew up out of life had in their turn to be tested by life. Believers began by reading these as if they were suggestive; after the writings had wrought their full impression upon the minds of the believers, they began to consider them inspired and holy. This decision did not come abstractly, nor did it come quickly. Gradually the sense of the value of certain writings grew upon the early church. Almost two centuries of the Christian era passed ere the collection so commended itself to believing hearts as to be given definite form. As in the case of the Old Testament, so in the case of the New, life declined to be hurried into a decision. The books must prove their authority in the experience of the people. The Christian republic was engaged in the task of choosing its Bible from life.