of science are, for
theologians, not different from those which obtain for scholars who, in
any other field, would establish truth and lead men. In a general way,
however, it may be said that the course of opinion in these two
generations, in reference to such questions as those of the dates and
authorship of the New Testament writings, has been one of rather
noteworthy retrogression from many of the Tuebingen positions. Harnack's
_Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur_, 1893, and his _Chronologie
der altchristlichen Literatur_, 1897, present a marked contrast to
Baur's scheme.

THE CANON

The minds of New Testament scholars in the last generation have been
engaged with a question which, in its full significance, was hardly
present to the attention of Baur's school. It is the question of the New
Testament as a whole. It is the question as to the time and manner and
motives of the gathering together of the separate writings into a canon
of Scripture which, despite the diversity of its elements, exerted its
influence as a unit and to which an authority was ascribed, which the
particular writings cannot originally have had. When and how did the
Christians come to have a sacred book which they placed on an equality
with the Old Testament, which last they had taken over from the
synagogue? How did they choose the writings which were to belong to this
new collection? Why did they reject books which we know were read for
edification in the early churches? Deeper even than the question of the
growth of the collection is that of the growth of the apprehension
concerning it. This apprehension of these twenty-seven different
writings as constituting the sole document of Christian revelation,
given by the Holy Spirit, the identical holy book of the Christian
Church, gave to the book a significance altogether different from that
which its constituent elements must have had for men to whom they had
appeared as but the natural literary deposit of the religious movement
of the apostolic age. This apprehension took possession of the mind of
the Christian community. It was made the subject of deliverances by
councils of the Church. How did this great transformation take place?
Was it an isolated achievement, or was it part of a general movement?
Did not this development of life in the Christian communities which gave
them a New Testament belong to an evolution which gave them also the
so-called Apostles' Creed and a monarchical