The question of the canon is not settled. It is probably the work of
successive inquirers to set it on a right basis, and adjust the various
parts in a manner consistent with historic criticism, sound reason, and
religion. The absolute and relative worth of books; the degrees in which
they regulate ethics and conduct; their varying values at the times of
their first appearance and our own; their places in the general history of
human progress—all these must be determined before the documents of
Judaism and Christianity be classified aright. Their present arrangement
is external. Based on no interior principle, it furnishes little help
toward a thorough investigation of the whole. Those who look upon the
question as historical and literary take a one-sided view. It has a
theological character also. It needs the application, not only of historic
criticism, but the immediate consciousness belonging to every Christian.
The two Testaments should be separated, and their respective positions
assigned to each—the Old having been preparatory to the New. Should it be
said bluntly, as it is in the 7th Article of the Anglican Church, that the
Old is not contrary to the New Testament? Luther at least expressed his
opinion of the difference between them pretty clearly;(385) though the
theologians of Germany after him evinced a desire to minimise the
difference.(386) Should the general opinion of the Protestant Church that
the authority of the Old Testament is not subordinate to that of the New,
be rigidly upheld? According to one aspect of the former it may be so,
viz., its prophetic and theological aspect, that in which it is brought
into close union with the latter; the essence of the one being
foreshadowed or implied in the other, as Justin Martyr supposed. And this
view has never lost supporters, who by the help of double senses, types,
and symbols, with assumed prediction of the definite and distant future,
transform the old dispensation into an outline picture of the new; taking
into it a body of divinity which is alien from its nature. According to
another aspect, viz., the moral and historical, the equality can scarcely
be allowed. Schleiermacher is right in saying that the Old Testament seems
to be nothing but a superfluous authority for doctrine; an opinion
coinciding with that of the early Socinians, who held that it has a
historical, not a dogmatic, value. Only such of our pious emotions as are
of a general nature are accurately reflected in the Old Testament; and all
that is most decidedly Jewish is of least value to christians. The alleged
coincidence of the Old Testament with the New must be modified by the
doctrine of development. It has been fostered by types and prophecies
supposed to refer to christian times; by the assumed _dictation_ of all
Scripture by the Holy Spirit; by fancied references of the one
dispensation to the other; by the confounding of a Jewish Messiah sketched
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