1911.—The Care of the Bible.
By Editor
Who took care of the Bible from its first existence until the Reformation? Or, where did the Protestants get it from? O. God in His providence cared for it. The Old Testament has been preserved through Jews as well as through Christians. Copies of the New Testament were multiplied by early Christians, and these copies were widely scattered. Some were hidden in churches and monasteries and secret places. Institutions and orders in the Catholic church preserved some of these copies, not knowing their worth and importance. We have an exact parallel in the Christian era to the Jewish age. Altho the Jews became apostate, they preserved the Scriptures, which they made void in their own lives by their tradition. Altho the church of the Christian era became fearfully apostate, in its archives were preserved copies of the Scriptures, not for use, but as sacred relics, the teachings of which the tradition of the church made void. Both the Old and New Testaments were preserved despite the apostasy in His church until the time of reformation. But if God's people in both Old and New Testament times had been faithful, how much better both would have been preserved, what a vastly greater number of copies the world would have had! Yet, praise God, notwithstanding the suppression of truth by apostasy, God preserved His Word which condemned the apostasy.