2. _Its General Acceptance._ The common consent of intelligent society has accredited this book as authentic and divine. (1) We find an _early acceptance_ among those best acquainted with its facts, and nearest to them; the Old Testament regarded as divine among the Jews; the New Testament among the Christians. (2) We find a _continuous acceptance_ through all the centuries since; at no time the chain of belief being broken. (3) We find a _present acceptance_ now; in this age of searching investigation, when nothing is accepted on ground of tradition only, the Bible has more readers, more students, more believers in the intelligent classes than at any previous period of its history. 3. _Its Characteristics._ The Bible contains four traits which, taken together, distinguish it from all other books. (1) _Its Variety._ Written at intervals through 1,600 years, by more than thirty authors, in different lands and different languages, it contains history, poetry, genealogy, biography, ethics, epistles, doctrine, and many other classes of composition. (2) _Its Harmony._ Underneath its variety of the surface there is a harmony, so that its statements and its principles are nowhere discordant. Contrast with this the discords of scientists. Could we place on one shelf sixty-six books on astronomy, written during sixteen centuries, by thirty writers, and find them harmonious? (3) _Its Unity._ Amid all the different subjects of the Bible there is one unifying purpose. It presents as its theme _Redemption_, and every chapter in every book falls into line in relation to that central thought. (4) _Its Progressiveness._ There is a steady development of truth in Scripture, a growing light through its centuries. We see the revelation beginning with Adam, taking a step upward with Noah, another with Abraham, again with Jacob, and so mounting higher in turn with Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Malachi, Peter and Paul, each on a loftier platform of spiritual knowledge than the age before him, until John crowns the pyramid of truth in his gospel and the Apocalypse. Not all the earth can show another book besides the Bible with all these four traits, which show the work divine.