,
racial and religious evolution of ancient Israel, just as the
literature of any nation or people reveals the same thing concerning
them,--no more and no less.

Turning now for a moment to the New Testament: Is it the source and
authority for Christianity? Or just the reverse? Which was first of
the two? That which goes before is the cause of that which comes
after,--not the reverse. If Christianity is to be considered as a
separate and distinct system of religion, based upon divine authority,
the system was finished, full and complete with the resurrection and
ascension of Christ--for the argument's sake, admitting these to be
facts. Hence Christianity would have existed as a fact just the same,
whether a line of the New Testament had ever been written or not. As a
matter of fact, not a line of it was written for twenty-five or thirty
years after these events, and it was not completed for a hundred years
thereafter. Therefore the New Testament did not produce Christianity;
nor is it the authority upon which it is based, but just the opposite.
Christianity produced the New Testament and is the authority upon which
it is based.

So the New Testament, like the Old, is just literature,--no more. It
records what the authors of its various parts, in the light of their
time, and with the knowledge they possessed, as common, fallible,
mortal men like ourselves, honestly thought, felt, hoped and believed
was the truth. It gives us the only historical sketch we have of the
origin and early development of that system of religion that in one
form or another now dominates a third part of the human race. And as
such it is the most valuable book the world possesses today. But it is
no more the "infallible Word of God" than the Old Testament, Herodotus,
Josephus, Plato or Plutarch.

The conclusion of the whole matter is: The Bible is not the
supernaturally inspired, infallible word of God, given by him as the
source and final authority for religion, outside of which and since its
close there is no more revelation; but it was written by fallible men
of like passions with ourselves, who wrote,--not as they were
infallibly and inerrantly guided by the Holy Spirit, but--as they were
moved by the same impulses, passions and motives that have moved men in
all ages to write their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, hopes, fears,
aspirations and views of life. Thus, as has already been said, the
Bible is a _product_ of religion inst