the New Testament stood in his day. He divides the books into three
classes--those acknowledged, those disputed, and those rejected. In the
second division he places the epistles of _James_ and _Jude_, the
_Second Epistle of Peter_ and the _Second_ and _Third_ of _John_; in the
first all our other books, but he says of the _Revelation of John_, that
some think that it should be put in the third division; in the third he
names a number of books which are of interest to us as showing what some
churches regarded as worthy of a place in the New Testament, and used as
they did our familiar gospels and epistles. By the end of that century,
under the influence of Athanasius and the Church in Rome, the New
Testament as it now stands became almost everywhere recognized.

The reason given for the acceptance or rejection of a book was its
_apostolic authorship_. Only books that could claim to have been written
by an apostle or an apostolic man were considered authoritative. We now
know that not all the books could meet this requirement; but the
Church's real reason was its own discriminating spiritual experience
which approved some books and refused others. Canon Sanday sums up the
selective process by saying: "In the fixing of the Canon, as in the
fixing of doctrine, the decisive influence proceeded from the bishops
and theologians of the period 325-450. But behind them was the practice
of the greater churches; and behind that again was not only the lead of
a few distinguished individuals, but the instinctive judgment of the
main body of the faithful. It was really this instinct that told in the
end more than any process of quasi-scientific criticism. And it was well
that it should be so, because the methods of criticism are apt to be,
and certainly would have been when the Canon was formed, both faulty and
inadequate, whereas instinct brings into play the religious sense as a
whole. Even this is not infallible; and it cannot be claimed that the
Canon of the Christian Sacred Books is infallible. But experience has
shown that the mistakes, so far as there have been mistakes, are
unimportant; and in practice even these are rectified by the natural
gravitation of the mind of man to that which it finds most nourishing
and most elevating."

In their attitude towards the Canon all Christians agree that the books
deemed authoritative must record the historic revelation which
culminated in Jesus and the founding of the Christian Church.