2. _Its General Acceptance._ The common consent of intelligent society has accredited this book as authentic and divine. (1) We find an _early acceptance_ among those best acquainted with its facts, and nearest to them; the Old Testament regarded as divine among the Jews; the New Testament among the Christians. (2) We find a _continuous acceptance_ through all the centuries since; at no time the chain of belief being broken. (3) We find a _present acceptance_ now; in this age of searching investigation, when nothing is accepted on ground of tradition only, the Bible has more readers, more students, more believers in the intelligent classes than at any previous period of its history.
3. _Its Characteristics._ The Bible contains four traits which, taken together, distinguish it from all other books. (1) _Its Variety._ Written at intervals through 1,600 years, by more than thirty authors, in different lands and different languages, it contains history, poetry, genealogy, biography, ethics, epistles, doctrine, and many other classes of composition. (2) _Its Harmony._ Underneath its variety of the surface there is a harmony, so that its statements and its principles are nowhere discordant. Contrast with this the discords of scientists. Could we place on one shelf sixty-six books on astronomy, written during sixteen centuries, by thirty writers, and find them harmonious? (3) _Its Unity._ Amid all the different subjects of the Bible there is one unifying purpose. It presents as its theme _Redemption_, and every chapter in every book falls into line in relation to that central thought. (4) _Its Progressiveness._ There is a steady development of truth in Scripture, a growing light through its centuries. We see the revelation beginning with Adam, taking a step upward with Noah, another with Abraham, again with Jacob, and so mounting higher in turn with Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Malachi, Peter and Paul, each on a loftier platform of spiritual knowledge than the age before him, until John crowns the pyramid of truth in his gospel and the Apocalypse. Not all the earth can show another book besides the Bible with all these four traits, which show the work divine.
4. _The Harmony of its Relations._ The statements of the Bible come into relation with facts ascertained in various departments of knowledge; yet in none of these do we find contradiction, in all an ever increasing harmony as our knowledge grows. (1) _With Localities._ The Bible names more than two thousand places in the ancient world; lands, rivers, seas, mountains, towns, villages, brooks, etc., yet not a single locality has been placed wrongly by the Scripture. (2) _With Existing Institutions._ We find in the world such bodies of people as the Jews, the Samaritans, the Christian church; such services as the passover, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, etc. Take away the Bible and none of these can be accounted for; open the Bible, their origin is plain. (3) _With Historical Monuments._ During the present century thousands of ancient inscriptions have been brought forth and deciphered, and the history of great empires has been written, bearing close relation to the history of the Bible. But not a line of the Bible annals has been discredited by these explorations, and many Bible statements have been placed in clearer light. (4) _With Science._ Though “the conflict of science and the Bible” has been often referred to, yet the testimony of the best scientists is that the opening chapters of Genesis are in substantial and growing accord with geology; that the tenth chapter of Genesis tallies with the latest conclusions of comparative philology; and that modern astronomy furnishes the best illustrations of the attributes of God as revealed in Scripture.