What I
Remember, vol. i, p. 444. American churchmen may well rejoice that the
fathers of the American branch of the Anglican Church were wise enough
and Christian enough to omit from their Prayer Book this damnatory
clause, as well as the Commination Service and the Athanasian Creed.

Most valuable, too, have been studies during the latter part of the
nineteenth century upon the formation of the canon of Scripture. The
result of these has been to substitute something far better for that
conception of our biblical literature, as forming one book handed out
of the clouds by the Almighty, which had been so long practically
the accepted view among probably the majority of Christians. Reverent
scholars have demonstrated our sacred literature to be a growth in
obedience to simple laws natural and historical; they have shown how
some books of the Old Testament were accepted as sacred, centuries
before our era, and how others gradually gained sanctity, in some cases
only fully acquiring it long after the establishment of the Christian
Church. The same slow growth has also been shown in the New Testament
canon. It has been demonstrated that the selection of the books
composing it, and their separation from the vast mass of spurious
gospels, epistles, and apocalyptic literature was a gradual process, and,
indeed, that the rejection of some books and the acceptance of others
was accidental, if anything is accidental.

So, too, scientific biblical research has, as we have seen, been obliged
to admit the existence of much mythical and legendary matter, as a
setting for the great truths not only of the Old Testament but of the
New. It has also shown, by the comparative study of literatures, the
process by which some books were compiled and recompiled, adorned
with beautiful utterances, strengthened or weakened by alterations and
interpolations expressing the views of the possessors or transcribers,
and attributed to personages who could not possibly have written them.
The presentation of these things has greatly weakened that sway of mere
dogma which has so obscured the simple teachings of Christ himself; for
it has shown that the more we know of our sacred books, the less certain
we become as to the authenticity of "proof texts," and it has disengaged
more and more, as the only valuable residuum, like the mass of gold
at the bottom of the crucible, the personality, spirit, teaching, and
ideals of the blessed Founder of Christian