A MAP OF LIFE involves a special relation of God to the human author and to the thing written, not to be found elsewhere. God so acted upon the mind and will of the author that what was written was what God wanted written. The inspired writing of the Jews — collected together in the Old Testament — were in sum a record of the Creation and Fall of Man, God’s dealing with fallen humanity and the preparation for the coming of a Saviour. The New Testament shows the Saviour actually in the world, doing the work he came to do, and arranging for its continuation to the end of time. It falls roughly into three divisions; (r) The Four Gospels (already touched upon in Chapter V) are records of Christ’s life upon earth; (2) The Acts of the Apostles and a handful of letters — written mainly by St. Paul — show the Church facing its first disciplinary and doctrinal problems; (3) The Apocalypse is a series of visions concerned mainly with the universal conflict of good and evil and its ultimate issue. DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE The Church then, by the time the last apostle died, had all the mass of truth the apostles had taught, the whole of it by word of mouth, a part of it in writing. She might have simply gone on, through the nineteen centuries since, repeating what had been taught, reading what had been written. In this case she would have been a preserver of truth 70