could not escape the notice of him who
severely rebuked even the verbal traditions by which the Jews made void
the law of God. Now we are told by some that a great many inspired
books have been lost; and they enumerate the prophecy of Enoch; the book
of the Wars of the Lord; the book of Joshua; the book of Iddo the seer;
the book of Nathan the prophet; the acts of Rehoboam; the book of Jehu,
the son of Hanani; and the five books of Solomon, on trees, beasts,
fowls, serpents, and fishes; which are alluded to in the Bible.

If the case were so, it is difficult to see what objection could be
raised against the divine authority of the books we have, because of the
divine authority of those we have not; for it is not supposed that one
divinely inspired book would contradict another. Nor yet can we see how
the loss of these books should disprove their inspiration, much less the
inspiration of those which remain, any more than the want of a record of
the multitude of words and works of Jesus himself which were never
committed to writing,[159] should be an argument against the divine
authority of the Sermon on the Mount. It will hardly be asserted that
God is bound to reveal to us everything that the human race ever did,
and to preserve such records through all time, or lose his right to
demand our obedience to a plain revelation of his will; or that we do
well to neglect the salvation of our own souls until we obtain an
infallible knowledge of the acts of Rehoboam.

But there is not the shadow of a proof that any of these were inspired
books, or that some of them were books at all. The Bible nowhere says
that Enoch wrote his prophecy, or that Solomon read his discourses on
natural history; nor of what religious interest they would have been to
us any more than the hard questions of the Queen of Sheba, and his
answers to them. Though the loss of these ancient chronicles may be
regretted by the antiquarian, the Christian feels not at all concerned
about it; knowing as he does, on the testimony of Christ, that the Holy
Scriptures, as he and his apostles delivered them to us, contain all
that we need to know in order to repent of our sins, lead holy lives,
and go to heaven; and that we have the very same Bible of which Jesus
said: "_They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. * * * If
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded
though one rose from the dead._"[160]

2. Another objection is, th