The same remarks apply to the third canon. _Direct divinity_ of origin was not the criterion which determined the reception of a book into it; but the character and authorship of the book. Did it breathe the old spirit, or proceed from one venerated for his wisdom? Was it like the old orthodox productions; or did it bear the name of one renowned for his piety and knowledge of divine things? The stamp of antiquity was necessary in a certain sense; but the theocratic spirit was the leading consideration. Ecclesiastes was admitted because it bore the name of Solomon; and Daniel’s apocalyptic writings, because veiled under the name of an old prophet. New psalms were taken in because of their association with much older ones in the temple service. Yet the first book of Maccabees was excluded, though written in Hebrew. It is still more remarkable that Sirach was put among the external productions; but this was owing not so much to its recent origin, for it is older than the book of Daniel, as to its being an apparent echo of the Proverbs, and therefore unnecessary. Yet it was long after assigned to the Hagiographa, and quoted as such by several rabbis. Baruch was also left out, though it is as old as Daniel, if not older; and professes to have been written by Jeremiah’s friend, in Babylon. That redactors dealt freely with the text of the second and third canons especially, without a superstitious belief in its sacredness, is apparent from the double recension which existed when the Egyptian Jews translated the books into Greek. If the one that formed the basis of the Alexandrian version be less correct than the Palestinian in the majority of instances, it is still superior in many. The differences between them, often remarkable, prove that those who had most to do with the books did not guard them as they would have done had they thought them infallibly inspired. Palestinians and Alexandrians subjected the text to redaction; or had suffered it to fall into a state inconsistent with the assumption of its supernatural origin. At a much later period, the Masoretes reduced to one type all existing copies of their Scriptures, introducing an uniformity imperatively demanded in their opinion by multiplied discrepancies. Whatever divine character the reflecting attributed to the canonical books, it must have amounted to the same thing as that assigned to human attributes and physical phenomena—a divinity resulting from the over-leaping of second causes, in the absence of inductive philosophy. Here the imperfection conditioned by the nature of the created cannot be hid. Yet the books may be truly said to have contained the word of God.