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"Money is the root of evil." Paul said, I. Timothy, vi. 10, "The love of money is the root of all evil."

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," Gen. iii. 19. Commonly quoted "brow."

"Cleanliness akin to godliness." Not in the Bible.

Our Lord's hearing the doctors in the Temple, and asking them questions, is frequently called his disputing with the doctors.

A SCRIPTURAL BULL.

In the book of Isaiah. chapter xxxvii. verse 36, is the following confusion of ideas:—

Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

WIT AND HUMOR IN THE BIBLE.

"Shocking!" many a good old saint will cry, at the very thought of it. "The Bible a jest-book! What godless folly shall we have up next?" No, the Bible is not a jest-book. But there is wit in it of the first quality; and a good reason why it should be there. Take a few specimens.

Job, in his thirtieth chapter, is telling how he scorned the low-lived fellows, who pretend to look down on him in his adversities. They are fools. They belong to the long-eared fraternity. Anybody, with less wit, might come out bluntly and call them asses. But Job puts it more deftly (xxx. 7): "Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together." If that is not wit, there is no such thing as wit. And yet the commentators don't see it, or won't see it. They are perfectly wooden when they come to any such gleam of humor.

Take another instance-Elijah's ridicule of the prophets of Baal. They are clamoring to their god, to help them out of a very awkward predicament. And, while they are at it, the prophet shows them up in a way that must have made the

people roar with laughter. The stiff, antiquated style of our English Bible tames down his sallies. Take them in modern phrase. These quack prophets have worked themselves into a perfect desperation, and are capering about on the altar as if they had the St. Vitus's dance. The scene (I. Kings xviii. 26, 27) wakes up all Elijah's sense of the ridiculous. "Shout louder! He is a god, you know. Make him hear! Perhaps he is chatting with somebody, or he is off on a hunt, or gone traveling. Or maybe he is taking a nap. Shout away! Wake him up!" Imagine the priests going through their antics on the altar, while Elijah bombards them in this style, at his leisure.

Paul shows a dry humor more than once, as in II. Cor. xii. 13: "Why haven't you fared as well as the other churches? Ah! there is one grievance-that you haven't had me to support. Pray do not lay it up against me!"

These instances might be multiplied from the Old and New Testaments both. What do they show? That the Bible is, on the whole, a humorous book? Far from it. That religion is a humorous subject-that we are to throw all the wit we can into the treatment of it? No. But they show that the sense of the ludicrous is put into a man by his Maker; that it has its uses, and that we are not to be ashamed of it, or to roll up our eyes in a holy horror of it.

THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT.

The name Old Testament was applied to the books of Moses by St. Paul (II. Cor. iii. 14), inasmuch as the former covenant comprised the whole scheme of the Mosaic revelation, and the history of this is contained in them. The phrase "book of the covenant," taken from Exod. xxiv. 7, was transferred in the course of time by metonymy to signify the writings themselves. The term New Testament has been in common use since the third century, and was employed by Eusebius in the sense in which it is now applied.

A SCRIPTURAL SUM.

Add to your faith, virtue;
And to virtue, knowledge;
And to knowledge, temperance;

And to temperance, patience;

And to patience, godliness;

And to godliness, brotherly kindness;

And to brotherly kindness, charity.

The Answer:-For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.-2 Peter i. 5, 8.

BIBLIOMANCY.

Bibliomancy, or divination by the Bible, had become so com mon in the fifth century, that several councils were obliged expressly to forbid it, as injurious to religion, and savoring of idolatry.

This kind of divination was named Sortes Sanctorum, or Sortes Sacræ, Lots of the Saints, or Sacred Lots, and consisted in suddenly opening, or dipping into, the Bible, and regarding the passage that first presented itself to the eye as predicting the future lot of the inquirer. The Sortes Sanctorum had succeeded the Sortes Homerica and Sortes Virgiliana of the Pagans; among whom it was customary to take the work of some famous poet, as Homer or Virgil, and write out different verses on separate scrolls, and afterwards draw one of them, or else, opening the book suddenly, consider the first verse that presented itself as a prognostication of future events. Even the vagrant fortune-tellers, like some of the gypsies of our own times, adopted this method of imposing upon the credulity of the ignorant. The nations of the East retain the practice to the present day. The famous usurper, Nadir Shah, twice decided upon besieging cities, by opening at random upon verses of the celebrated poet Hafiz.

This abuse, which was first introduced into the church about the third century, by the superstition of the people, afterwards gained ground through the ignorance of some of the clergy, who permitted prayers to be read in the churches for this very pur

pose. It was therefore found necessary to ordain in the Council of Vannes, teld A.D. 465, "That whoever of the clergy or laity should be detected in the practice of this art should be cast out of the communion of the church." In 506, the Council of Agde renewed the decree; and in 578, the Council of Auxerre, amongst other kinds of divination, forbade the Lots of the Saints, as they were called, adding, "Let all things be done in the name of the Lord;" but these ordinances did not effectually suppress them, for we find them again noticed and condemned in a capitulary or edict of Charlemagne, in 793. Indeed, all endeavors to banish them from the Christian church appear to have been in vain for ages.

The Name of God.

Tell them I AM, JEHOVAH said
To Moses, while earth heard in dread;
And, smitten to the heart,

At once, above, beneath, around,
All nature, without voice or sound,

Replied, O LORD! THOU ART!

Christopher Smart, an English Lunatic.

Ir is singular that the name of God should be spelled with four letters in almost every known language. It is in Latin, Deus; Greek, Zeus; Hebrew, Adon; Syrian, Adad; Arabian, Alla; Persian, Syra; Tartarian, Idga; Egyptian, Aumn, or Zeut; East Indian, Esgi, or Zenl; Japanese, Zain; Turkish, Addi; Scandinavian, Odin; Wallachian, Zene; Croatian, Doga; Dalmatian, Rogt; Tyrrhenian, Eher; Etrurian, Chur; Margarian, Oese; Swedish, Codd; Irish, Dich; German, Gott; French, Dieu; Spanish, Dios; Peruvian, Lian.

The name God in the Anglo-Saxon language means good, and this signification affords singular testimony of the AngioSaxon conception of the essence of the Divine Being. He is

goodness itself, and the Author of all goodness. Yet the idea of denoting the Deity by a term equivalent to abstract and absolute perfection, striking as it may appear, is perhaps less remarkable than the fact that the word Man, used to designate a human being, formerly signified wickedness; showing how well aware were its originators that our fallen nature had become indentified with sin.

JEHOVAH.

The word Elohim, as an appellation of Deity, appears to have been in use before the Hebrews had attained a national existence. That Jehovah is specifically the God of the Hebrews is clear, from the fact that the heathen deities never receive this name; they are always spoken of as Elohim. Both the pronunciation and the etymological derivation of the word Jehovah are matters of critical controversy. The Jews of later periods from religious awe abstained from pronouncing it, and whenever it occurred in reading, substituted the word Adonai (my Lord); and it is now generally believed that the sublinear vowel signs attached to the Hebrew tetragrammaton Jhuh belong to the substituted word. Many believe Jahveh to be the original pronunciation. The Hebrew root of the word is believed to be the verb havah or hayah, to be; hence its meaning throughout the Scriptures, "the Being," or "the Everlasting."

GOD IN SHAKSPEARE.

Michelet (Jeanne d'Arc,) speaking of English literature, says that it is "Sceptique, judaique, satanique." In a note he says, "I do not recollect to have seen the word GOD in Shakspeare. If it is there at all, it is there very rarely, by chance, and without a shadow of religious sentiment." Mrs. Cowden Clarke, by means of her admirable Concordance to Shakspeare, enables us to weigh the truth of this eminent French writer's remark. The word GOD occurs in Shakspeare upwards of one thousand times, and the word heaven, which is so frequently substituted for the word GOD-more especially in the historical plays-occurs about eight hundred times. In the Holy Scriptures, according

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