(p.112.)

[The volume of the Old Testament Scriptures, indivisible.]

"In regard of the Old Testament, it will be observed that the whole volume stands or falls altogether. In whatever sense we understand the falling or standing, the volume stands or falls together. Each page of it is committed to the credit of the rest, and the whole book or collection of books is committed to the credit of each page. For this plain reason, that the book as we have it, is the book which, being known in the Jewish Church as the volume of her authentic and sacred Scriptures, our blessed Saviour accepted and referred to as such. By whatever marks the canonicity of the several books was in the first instance attested,—marks which were sufficient for God's purpose, and which did His work,—there is the volume. 'It is written,' said our Saviour; that is, in a book which all His nation knew of, and understood to be inspired. The scrupulous care which the Jews shewed in preserving their sacred writings intact, is one of the most remarkable facts in history; it is a fact of which the Christian student can give perhaps the right account, seeing it to have been so ordered in the good providence of God, that we might have firm ground in calling the book, as we have it, the Word of God. The volume stands or falls then together; which we may with advantage bear in mind, because it makes an argument which is available for any portion of the volume, available for the whole; and no one can now say, 'You do not surely hold the genealogies in the books of Chronicles, to be inspired: Isaiah and the Psalms may be inspired; but do you mean the same of the long extracts from mere annals?' No man, I say, can take this freedom, until he can extract and remove those chapters from the book which our blessed Saviour unquestionably referred to as the canonical Scriptures of the Church. If a verse stands, the Old Testament stands."—Sermons, by the Rev. C.P. Eden, pp.152-3.