The Reader will find that each volume after the first has a double paging, the top series of figures being limited to the individus volume, the bottom one running on through each four volum which will thus ultimately form one, with a continuous paging, and new title-pages and contents. Thus each subject is completed in a single volume, but the whole of the twelve volumes will be so arranged as to form an unbroken work, in three thick volumes -AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. Vol. VI., BIBLICAL NATURAL HISTORY: Zoography, will be published on the 1st of April, and the succeeding volumes, one on the 1st of each month, till completed. VII. THE SOURCES AND CHARACTER OF SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES, REAL AND IMAGINARY. VIII. AN EXAMINATION OF SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES::THE PENTATEUCH. IX. AN EXAMINATION OF SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES:THE POST MOSAIC HISTORIES. X. AN EXAMINATION OF SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES :THE POETIC AND PROPHETIC BOOKS. XI. AN EXAMINATION OF SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES:THE GOSPELS. XII. AN EXAMINATION OF SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES:-THE ACTS AND THE EPISTLES. THE great characteristic of the Bible, looked at as a literary composition, or series of compositions, is simplicity. It is addressed to mankind at large; the Gospel is preached to all the world, and the Gospel includes all the Scriptures, which consist of "good news," all centering in the one great and precious truth, that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John iii. 16.) The facts of history which the Bible narrates, are narrated in the simplest manner, and are brought within the comprehension of the most illiterate person, for even such a one will not be perplexed with a description of geological or astronomical phenomena, or the principles of classification of the flora and fauna of the earth. "The truths of religion are found in the Bible," says Professor Stowe, as plants and minerals are found in nature. The mineralogist and botanist must collect his minerals and plants one by one, as he finds them here and there scattered over the fields and by the hill-side; and he must 66 1 himself, in his cabinet, systematise and arrange them in their scientific order, for God never does that. In arranging his plants and minerals in their several localities, God shows an utter disregard of scientific order." The professor pushes his notion a little too far, we think, but there is much truth in it, nevertheless, as referable to the historical and descriptive parts of the Bible. The law of order obtains there, as it does everywhere else, but scientific difficulties are never obtruded, and science, as science, is not taught. This was all left for the exercise of man's intellectual faculties; the progress of science was left dependant upon that development of man's intellect to which knowledge is the stimulant. That is, beyond all doubt, one of the great laws of God's providential government. The object of the Bible is not to teach natural science, but religion-not to supersede or restrict the exercise and use of those powers of investigation and discovery with which the Almighty Father has endowed us, by laying open the secrets and mysteries of the material universe, the relation of its several parts, and the laws by which they are governed. Its purpose is to reveal what the natural powers of man are wholly incapable of discovering -man's relation to God in his fallen state, and the means by which he may obtain a restoration of God's image and a blissful immortality. The Bible is not a repository of science but of theology, and those who have taken it to be an arcanum of natural philosophy, and have founded upon it the outlines and much of the details of the divine cosmogony, have wasted precious time and ingenuity which might have been more profitably employed upon other objects. The first chapter of Genesis comprises a brief account of the production of all things in the heavens and the earth-that is, of our system-and of all which the earth contains, animate and inanimate, from man to the microscopic animalcule, from "the cedar in Lebanon even to the hyssop that groweth on the wall;" and the eleventh chapter of Leviticus is a catalogue of animals belonging to the several classes, as we have them now. But we shall search in vain, in either place, for anything further than an enumeration of the bare facts of their existence, and of those qualities or properties the knowledge of which was necessary for certain sanitary, moral, and religious purposes. These being made known, there is an end of the revelation touching natural objects, and all the incidental references to them that are scattered throughout the Divine Book are in strict accordance with human knowledge at the time they were made, though so expressed as not to be in contradiction to the more perfect knowledge of later times. We have said that there is no scientific arrangement of the subjects of natural science discoverable in the Bible; but it must not be inferred, therefore, that no order is observed-no orderly arrangement of subjects. Mr. Charles Taylor, in a work long since out of print, but the most valuable portions of which the writer of these pages has preserved in the fifth edition of the 4to. (5 vols.) edition of Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, has pointed out the threefold arrangement of Moses, in the narrative of the creation. Thus we have 1. GEOLOGY. Gen. i. 1. 2. BOTANY. ver. 11, 12. 3. ZOOGRAPHY. Here are the three kingdoms of nature-animal, vegetable, and mineral-opened up to our contemplation. How extended is the range, and how teeming with the materials of devout meditation ! "All nature is a glass, reflecting God, As by the sea reflected is the sun, Too glorious to be gazed on in his sphere!" The Mosaic arrangement is simple, rising from inert matter to vegetation, from this to animal life, and thence to intellectual being. Each branch of the division is further disposed in triads, thus 1 and 2 of the third branch is again subdivided, thus What a beautiful gradation is here! 3. Reptiles. It exhibits the connecting links throughout the whole order and class of being-connecting links so extensive as to excite wonder and admiration. Among a certain description of stones, some are found that are fibrous and have laminæ, or a kind of leaves; as slate, talc, lithophytes, or stony-marine plants, the amianthus or stony flower of mines. And these lead us from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom. The plant |