It is the first book, the best book, and the oldest book in all the world. It contains the choicest matter, gives the best instruction, and affords the greatest pleasure and satisfaction that ever was revealed. It contains the best laws and profoundest mysteries that ever were penned. It brings the best tidings, and affords the best of comfort to the inquiring and disconsolate. It exhibits life and immortality, and shows the way to everlasting glory. It is a brief recital of all that is past, and a certain prediction of all that is to come. It settles all matters in debate, resolves all doubts, and eases the mind and conscience of all their scruples. It reveals the only living and true GOD, and shows the way to Him; and sets aside all other gods, and describes the vanity of them, and all that trust in them. In short, it is a book of laws to show right and wrong; a book of wisdom, that condemns all folly, and makes the foolish wise; a book of truth, that detects all lies, and confutes all errors; and a book of life, that shows the way from everlasting death. It is the most compendious book in all the world; the most authentic, and the most entertaining history that ever was published; it contains the most early antiquities, strange events, wonderful occurrences, heroic deeds, unparalleled wars. It describes the celestial, terrestrial, and infernal worlds; and the origin of the angelic myriads, human tribes, and infernal legions. It will instruct the most accomplished mechanic, and the profoundest artist; it will teach the best rhetorician, and exercise every power of the most skilful arithmetician; puzzle the wisest anatomist, and exercise the nicest critic. It corrects the vain philosopher, and guides the wise astronomer; it exposes the subtle sophist, and makes diviners mad. It is a complete code of laws, a perfect book of divinity, an unequalled narrative; a book of lives, a book of travels, and a book of voyages. It is the best covenant that ever was agreed on, the best deed that ever was sealed, the best evidence that ever was produced, the best will that ever was made, and the best testament that ever was signed. To understand it is to be wise indeed; to be ignorant of it, is to be destitute of wisdom. It is the king's best copy, the magis trate's best rule, the housewife's best guide, the servant's best directory, and the young man's best companion. It is the schoolboy's spelling-book, and the learned man's masterpiece! it contains a choice grammar for a novice, and a profound treatise for a sage; it is the ignorant man's dictionary, and the wise man's directory. It affords knowledge of witty inventions for the ingenious, and dark sayings for the grave; and it is its own interpreter. It encourages the wise, the peacemaker, the racer, the overcomer; and promises an eternal reward to the moral conqueror. And that which crowns all is, that the AUTHOR is without partiality, and without hypocrisy, for "in Him is no variableness, nor shadow of turning." It contains 3,566,480 letters; 810,697 words; 31,173 verses; 1,189 chapters; 66 books. The word and 46,227 times; the word reverend only once, which is in the 9th verse of the 111th Psalm; the word Lord 1,855 times; the middle and least chapter is the 117th Psalm; the middle verse the 8th of 118th Psalm; and the 21st verse 7th chapter of Ezra contains the alphabet. The finest chapter to read is the 26th of Acts; the 19th chapter of Second book of Kings, and the 37th chapter of Isaiah are alike. The least verse is the 33rd of the 11th chapter of John; and the 8th, 15th, 21st, and 31st verses of the 107th Psalm are alike. Each verse of the 136th Psalm ends alike; there are no words or names in the Bible of more than six syllables. KAF. ANECDOTES OF CHILDHOOD. No. 1. THAT feature of Mary's childhood which she most distinctly remembers, is an intense thirst for knowledge, a natural inclination to ask, Why? What for? What makes it so? In consequence of which many of her acquaintance styled her little Miss Why-why, and, I believe, thought her a troublesome child; for often has she retired into her little bed-room and wept bitterly, when one or other of the above questions have been met by the reply, " Don't ask such silly questions. Children should not be inquisitive." And again and again did she resolve that she would ask no more; but a child's resolution is feeble, and the promptings of a natural disposition are strong, and, therefore, her friends were still annoyed by her queries. FACTS FROM HISTORY. In the reign of Henry VII., the fashion of wearing peaks to shoes or boots, of a length exceeding eleven inches, was prohibited to all but gentlemen. Hats were not much used until 1500; though mention is made of them in a statute of Richard III., by which the price of a hat is limited to twenty-pence. In 1567, glass was such a rarity, as not usually to be found in the houses of the nobility. It is probable that glass-windows were not introduced into farm-houses until the reign of James I. In the reign of Richard III., the clergy were the principal medical practitioners. Although the age was warlike, surgery was little understood; and dissection was decried as a barbarous outrage upon the dead. In Scotland, as late as 1661, the windows of the country houses were not glazed, and only the upper parts, even of those of the king's palaces, shutters, to open at pleasure to admit the fresh air. had glass; the lower ones having two wooden It was not until the end of the reign of Henry VIII., that salads, carrots, turnips, or other When Qucen Catharine wanted a salad, she used edible roots, were generally produced in England. IN 1505, shillings were first coined in England. Slaves of both sexes were publicly sold in England near the conclusion of the fourteenth century. All the Anglo-Norman kings, to Richard I., styled themselves kings, dukes, or counts of their One day Mr. Mond, an intelligent gentle-people, not of their dominions. man, who thought it not beneath him to spend his time in doing good to those of whom our Saviour said, "Suffer them to come unto me, and forbid them not," was present, when some persons were speaking of a "diving-bell," and heard little Mary ask-" What prevents the water getting into the bell?" and he heard too the reply, -"Oh, such a tiny child can't understand these things don't ask questions." The colour rose in Mary's cheeks, the tears into her eyes; and with a throbbing heart she was about once more to enter her little room, and there renew her weeping and her resolution, when Mr. Mond took her hand, drew her towards him, and placing her upon his knee, said soothingly-"My dear little girl, I will tell you all about the diving-bell presently; you may ask questions, only not when any one is speaking." The readers must recal their own childish feelings, to understand how great was Mary's joy when she thus heard, for the first time, that it was not wrong to ask questions. She wiped her eyes, and in the fulness of heart threw her tiny arms round Mr. M.'s neck, saying "Then I will never again ask questions when any one is speaking." And although she was not at that time six years old, I believe she kept her promise, and with gratitude remembers that to this valued friend, with his amiable wife, she is indebted for the purest enjoyments of her childhood, for they taught her also that she might, young as she was, dig for knowledge in her own mind, and often find it for the digging. They encouraged her too to hope tioned, that in the reign of Henry VIII. viothat she might one day become as wise and lent animosities existed in England between good as she often desired with earnestness English and foreign artificers. On one occasion a to be. If all who have to do with little child-violent tumult was raised in London by apprentices and workmen, who attempted to break open ren would thus care for them, how much of early sorrow and later worthlessness would be avoided!-MARY R. [The above is an actual recollection of the childhood of the author, Mary R. Most of our readers may have various incidents of their early history fresh in their recollection; and by contributing brief "Anecdotes of Childhood" to this series, they may be assisting both children and parents in the discharge of their reciprocal duties. The length of the above, it should be observed, is quite sufficient for an "Anecdote," which loses much of its effect if the narrative be encumbered by superfluous words. 1 to despatch a messenger to Holland to obtain it! In the reign of Henry IV., by one of the ordered "that no student shall occupy a book in statutes of St. Mary's College, Oxford, it was the library above one hour at the most, so that others may not be hindered from the use of the same. there were only four classics in the royal library at Paris: these were, one copy of Cicero, Ovid, Lucan, and Boethius; the rest consisted chiefly of books of devotion, astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, and medicine, with pandects, chronicles, and romances. A single book was of vast importance in those days. The prior and convent of Rochester declared that they would, every year, pronounce sentence of damnation on him who should purloin a Latin copy of Aristotle's Physics, or even obliterate the title. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, As a contrast with the forthcoming assembling of the industrious of all nations, it may be men. prisons in order to liberate some persons confined for insulting foreigners. And before these disorders were quelled, thirteen of the rioters were executed. Four hundred others were apprehended and brought before the king with ropes about their necks, and, falling on their-knees, cried for mercy. A curious proclamation afterwards issued, directing that women should not meet together to babble and talk, and that all men should keep their wives in their houses! It is needless to add that the law is now obsolete! |