I then inquired if he regarded the Scriptures as the only and sufficient rule of faith and practice.
To this he also agreed.

I then asked him if he did not think that, in making up the canon, that is, in directing what books and epistles should go into it, God had reference to the wants of all coming times?
He signified his assent.

I then asked his attention to a few thoughts connected with that point.
"Here is the Epistle to Philemon, placed by the hand of the Holy Spirit himself in the Sacred Canon.

It is on a small piece of parchment, easily lost; the wind might have blown it from Philemon's table out of the window, beyond recovery; it was not addressed to a Church, to be kept in its archives; it is a private letter, subject to every change in the condition of a private citizen.

Yet, while the epistle to Laodicea, sent about the same time, is irrecoverably lost, this little writing, addressed to a private man, goes into the Bible, by direction of God! "Do you not suppose," said I, "that God had a meaning in this beyond merely informing us how a master received a servant back to bondage ?" "What further purpose do you think there was in it ?" said he.
"I only know," said I, "that slave-holding was to be a subject, as has proved to be the case, which would involve the interests of at least two of the continents of the earth, one of them being then unknown.