No record is given of much that the Lord said to Moses and the prophets. Hardly

anything is recorded of the forty days' ministry of the Lord after the resurrection

(Luke 24: and Acts 1:). The ministry of Paul covers about thirty years; that of Isaiah

sixty, and that of Daniel about ninety. It would be a poor estimate of the ability of these

writers to regard their total literary output as limited to what is found in the Bible.

I Kings 4: 32 tells us that Solomon spake three thousand proverbs. The most liberal

computation will not include more than nine hundred proverbs in the whole book of that

name, and of this number Solomon is the author of about six hundred. The remaining

proverbs spoken by Solomon may have been very wise sayings, but were of no

permanent value and were never given by inspiration of God to be included in the Canon

of Scripture. Solomon also wrote one thousand and five songs, but of these only two

have been placed in the Canon--The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, and

Psa. 127: preserved most probably by Hezekiah.

As further evidence concerning the integrity of the Canon of Scripture, consider that

from the days of Moses until the present day, a period of over three thousand years, in

spite of the most appalling judgments and dispersions of Israel, nothing has prevented the

steady growth of the sacred oracles among them, and nothing has ever induced them to

add to, take away from, or to transpose anything in them.  When "the seal of the

prophets", Malachi, had uttered his message, about four hundred years before Christ, the

completed Scriptures were then what they have ever since been, one unbroken and

perfect whole, the thirty-nine books of the English version. Whether in Alexandria, in

Greece, in Babylon, or in Rome, all Israel gives one testimony. We are confident that He

Who watched over Israel, watches over His Word, and that not a jot or tittle of inspired

truth has ever been, or ever can be lost.

We have briefly considered the claims of the Scriptures to inspiration, and have also

indicated the grounds we have for accepting, as truly canonical, all and only those books

which are now contained in the collection known as the Bible. Here we might leave the

matter, but such a treasure as the very Word of God is an abiding source of delight, and

teems with points of interest that cannot but be attractive to every believer. Consequently

we hope to pursue some profitable by-paths in Bible knowledge; and in this article we

take up the question of the way in which the text of the original has been preserved, and

of the means we have of arriving at a conclusion upon the matter.

When the student of Scripture takes up his Bible, he will not read far before he comes

across a marginal note to the effect that, "Some ancient authorities read ---" It is natural