HOURS WITH MY BIBLE CLASS. No. 1.

BY THE REV. J. A. BAYNES, OF NOTTINGHAM.

There are to be seen, in many of the green nooks of this dear land of ours, little, quiet country churches, with their sharp spires, or old, grey, square towers, rising and pointing to the skies, with rude stone arches, piled up by hands that have been lying still for many an age beneath the green turf outside, and with low porches opening continually that the village families might enter and find peace on the holy day of rest. One can hardly have gone much into the byeways of our country without seeing often such venerable memorials of a former time. Inside many of them, and quite in keeping with all the rest about them, you may notice the old wooden reading desk, and the large strong chain that is fastened to it, and sometimes the treasure that it holds, though in many cases the chain is left, while the chained has been set free. If the old book, bound in real stout leather-covered boards be there, there is a little church in Patterdale, near Ulswater, where the old book still lies a prisoner,-go up to it, look into its curious pages, spell out its old-fashioned and quaintly written words, and you will find that, after all, they are the very same that out of its plain little shilling volume every child in your Sabbath school class has been used to read and to learn. Time was, then, it would seem, when that book, now so cheap, was much scarcer and more valuable. It must be a strange book, too; for though often one age of men value very highly what the next put aside as useless, yet this book seems to keep its place. We remember, long ago, how King Edward would not tread upon it, because it was too good to be treated with such disrespect; and even now, when it has grown so common, we find that people esteem it just as much, and count it a better book still than all that have ever been made before or since. What a change in one respect, and what a sameness in another! The very book that they used to chain up so that everybody who would read it must go to the desk, and might not take it away, is now in everybody's own hands, and we may all have it and read it for ourselves; yet that very same book which was

it seen since the long time back when it first was written? I know you call it the Bible, and say, "Why, of course, it is the Bible;" but that will not do for an answer. I want to know what is the Bible more than other books; and what is the history of this book you call the Bible? Questions like these are very natural, and we have all, perhaps, at some time or other, put them to ourselves, so we will put them once more now and here, and try to answer them simply, as best we may be able.

We have here in our hands the translation, in our own language, of a volume that we believe consists of messages from God, conveyed to us through the means of holy men, at different times, and in various places. The volume, of which this is a translation, is a collection of books in the Hebrew and Chaldee languages, and contains all the relics of the Hebrew-Chaldee literature up to a certain period. These books were accounted holy and inspired by the Jews and the ancient Christian church. It contains also, the genuine inspired writings of the early Christian times relating to the history and doctrine of the religion of Jesus. These were composed mostly in Greek by the apostles of Christ, their assistants, and pupils. It is a volume of very varied character in the nature and style of its contents. Fragmentary history from the very earliest time, national records of a peculiar people, lyric and dramatic poetry, praise, prophecy, and prayer, all are here; and this collection of holy writings we call THE BIBLE,-emphatically THE BOOK.

The BIBLE! That is a word which seems to speak to us of the antiquity of the book, for it recalls to us the memory of the days of old, when men had not as yet learned to weave the neat fabrics on which we seek to immortalize our thoughts. We remember that the BIBLOS is the inner bark of that broad-leafed reed that grows rankly in the sedgy marshes of the ancient Nile. Papyrus

they called it sometimes, and they turned it to good account. From this did the Bible take its name; and the name that boasts so old a parentage, should belong to something venerable for age.

And this suggests to us, also, that men have not always been used to make and preserve volumes such as ours, and that these very words and thoughts which we have here recorded after our own fashion and style, were preserved by our fathers in the far-back time by ways of their own, and in modes peculiar to themselves. What were those ways, then, of registering thought that were known and employed when the earliest-felt necessity became, for the first time,the mother of invention ? Let us pause a moment in our track, that we may glance at the old books of the "World's grey Fathers," before we turn again to handle our own.

I. ANTIQUE WRITING.

In asking of the earliest knowledge of creating and preserving a permanent memorial of thought, I find nearly the first traces of the art of writing in connexion with the Life and Works of Moses. It is true that there are hints and facts that lead us to believe that it was known still earlier. You see, for instance, in one or two places in the book of Genesis, reference to names or signs graven on seals "the signet of a man" as it is in the Hebrew,-which looks like the custom of which Niebuhr tells us, when he says that "in the East the Imaums, the Kadis, and other learned Arabs, usually write their names with letters interlacing each other in cyphers, in order that their signature may not be imitated. Those who cannot write, cause their names to be written by others, and then stamp their name or their device with ink at the bottom of the paper or on the back of it. But usually they have their name or their device engraved on a stone which they wear on their finger." A custom abundantly illustrated by the habits of our own time and country.

As a proof also of the early origin of some record of thought, they tell us of the discovery at Babylon, of a memorial of observations on the stars, begun in the 85th year of Abraham; and we are reminded of "all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and of

Numbers xxiv. 17.

the great unlikelihood of the absence of every mode of writing from that large circle of their ancient lore.

Admitting the full force of all these hints, facts, and suggestions, it is still true, as De Wette says in his Archaiology, that "before Moses there is no trace of a written document. With Moses, we find the use of writing, in inscriptions, particularly on the Tables of the Law, on the ornaments of the High Priest, and on Mount Ebal," and still more emphatically in the heaven-taught writings that constitute so important a part of our sacred volume.

The progress of the art to its alphabetical position, would seem to have been through the stages of pictorial and hieroglyphical writing. The first natural notion appears to be to make what is called in Leviticus xxvi. 1, "a stone of picture." It was thus that the aboriginal warriors of Mexico, when the Spaniards landed on their shores, sent up the tidings to their king, at a distance, by forwarding to his barbarian majesty, a somewhat rude artistic sketch of the European invaders. The hieroglyphical style would be an abridgment of the pictorial, and an adoption of sundry symbolical signs, at first appropriate, and then, as in the alphabet, to a great degree arbitrary. system of symbols was carried to great refinement by the Egyptians, and their signs gave rise to many Oriental metaphors:take as an example, the prophetic utterance of the seer from Aram, on the mountainheights of Peor: "There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel." The sceptre in symbolic language meant a king, and the star a God: the emblem thus mingled the ideas of royalty and divinity.

The

In passing on to enquire respecting the material employed for the preservation of ideas, we find that tables of stone were amongst the earliest and most common material used for that purpose. Moses seems to have been mainly a lithographer. We are too familiar with the pages of sacred story to need reminding of the fact that the commands of God to Israel were thus made permanent. Joshua, too, "wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel;"§ and Job, in the early

? Joshua viii. 32.

patriarchal times in which he lived, wishing earnestly that his words might be perpetuated, exclaims, "Oh, that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!"*

Bricks were used, also, for the same purpose. They were written upon while wet, and then dried in the sun or baked in the furnace. Josephus speaks of a column of brick, on which the children of Seth wrote their inventions; and lately at Persepolis, and since at Babylon, there have been found bricks with inscriptions, joined together, not by mortar, but by the slime or bitumen, to which reference is made in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. These bricks are three inches thick, and twelve square; they have been brought home by the East India Company, and are now-some in the British Museum, and others stored up in the museum at the East India House. Wood was employed subsequently for writing upon,† and by the Greeks and Romans, wood, overlaid with wax, which was written on by a style, an instrument sharp at one end for writing, smooth at the other for erasing and restoring the wax. Such, probably, was the writing-table supplied to the dumb father of the Baptist that he might write the name of his son-"John."t

The use of the bark of trees, and especially of the papyrus, has already been hinted at. This latter was the most common Egyptian material. The trunk of the papyrus which grows plentifully in the Nile, has several coatings, lying one on the other. These are taken off with a needle, spread on a moistened table, covered with a layer

of paste, or the muddy, glutinous water of the Nile, and more leaves are then added, until the required thickness is secured, and it is thus made fit for use.

An after-invention still, was that of parchment. The kings of Egypt had stored up their large Papyrian library at Alexandria, and as they were anxious to secure to themselves a literary monopoly, they refused to supply the kings of Pergamus with their Egyptian reeds. Reduced by this necessity to become inventors, the Pergamian monarchs prepared for purposes of writing, the skins of animals, and these were named after the place where first they were employed-" Pergamena," whence our word, "parchment." This was about B.C. 200.

Time-the great and unsparing destroyer -has dealt ruthlessly with the older traces of our sacred records. They have perished long ago. The most ancient remains that are preserved to us, are some of the parchment copies of the original writings, and these not the earliest written. By all the means, however, to which we have here made reference, we doubt not that in succeeding ages these precious treasures have been perpetuated and handed down from one generation to another, until they have thus been delivered even to us. They have been watched and guarded in their journeying from age to age, so that they have never perished nor suffered material injury; but by God's good providence are here to speak to us the holy words they uttered to the mighty dead of buried centuries, and to guide us, like them, to a world of clearer vision, and of more full and glorious revelation.

A NARRATIVE OF DEATH-BED CONVERSION.

BY THE REV. J. P. MURSELL.

A few weeks since I was asked by a member of the church under my care, to visit a person in deep affliction, who had expressed a desire to see me. On calling on the patient, I was introduced to a young man about twentythree years of age, previously a stranger to me, of pleasing appearance, of much natural shrewdness, and of gentle and amiable

manners. Consumption had made such inroads on his health that there was evidently but little strength remaining, not enough to enable him to converse without great exertion. Death had marked him as his prey, and, so ill was the sufferer, that it seemed as though the grim monster had reluctantly granted him a brief respite from his silent dominions. After a remark or two, I said, "You entertain, I presume, no hope of recovery ?" He answered, "No." "Are

you happy," I enquired, "in the prospect of

Luke i. 63.

the great change which is so soon to pass upon you?" In the most placid manner he said, "Yes! I have no fear of death; none of those miserable feelings of which some complain in prospect of it." "I am glad to find you so composed, if your composure be well founded. From what considerations do you derive the happiness of which you speak?" "Well, sir," the gasping patient said, "I have usually comforted myself with the thought, that if there is a God, he will take care of me." "It is late in the day," I said, "for you to talk suppositiously on subjects of the first moment to all, but especially, under the circumstances, to you; I am sorry to hear you say, 'If there is a God!'"' "Oh, don't mistake me, sir," was the reply, "I believe in the existence of God; no thoughtful man can look on the wonders around him, or think about his own person, without being convinced that there is a great Omnipotent Being; but I do not think, Mr. Mursell," said he, with much emphasis, "that the Bible God is the true God, there appears to me to be a good deal that is strange and foolish in the Bible." "Have you been accustomed," I asked, "to mix with the people calling themselves Socialists ?" "No; I have never had anything to do with them, nor ever liked them." "Have you frequented public worship at all?" "Not a great deal; mostly, when I went anywhere, it was to the Unitarian place; but I have heard you of late, till I became too unwell, on Sunday nights."

I looked with deep concern on the interesting patient, and all the more so, from perceiving the perfect candour and simplicity of his spirit. I said, "You have been very frank, and I thank you for it; my time is gone; I will call again to morrow morning; possibly, however, you may be dead before then; you must, therefore, allow me to be candid and faithful too. It is, then, my firm and solemn belief, that if you die in your present state, you will be lost for ever. There is a way of escape. This is revealed in that Bible which you despise." I pointed him to the Saviour of sinners, and entreated him to think over what I had said by the morning, should we meet again.

I found him on the following day anxiously waiting for further conversation. "I gathered from my interview yesterday with you," I said, "that you believe in the existence of God." "O yes, sir, I do." "Have you any doubt as to a future state

of being ?" He said, "No; I think there is another world beyond this." "If there is another world, if men are to live for ever, do you think it likely that the blessed God would leave us in uncertainty about it ? Is it not probable that he would place so momentous a question as this beyond all doubt ?" "Well, I think it is." "Well, unaided reason could never ascertain it, could go no further than conjecture respecting it; hence the necessity of revelation. This great doctrine of man's immortality is set at rest for ever in the Bible. If, then, you believe in the existence of God, and in the reality of a future state, what are your views as to your preparedness to enter into that state? Do you regard yourself as a sinner before God?" "Well, sir," he said, "that perplexes me. I have never fallen into the practices that some men live in intemperance, and other vices, I have always avoided, and it has been my care to act morally and uprightly. I am perplexed when you ask me about sin." "I am glad," I said, "to hear you have avoided the open vices which so disgrace society; but you might have been withheld from these by aversion to low company, self-respect, friendship, worldly interest, and various similar motives, not from the fear of God, from love to Him, from a dread of his frown, and an appreciation of his favour. According to your own confession, you have not thought much about Him, or lived in communion with Him you have lived without God in the world. You have lived in a sinful state you see, whatever might have been the complexion of your outward life." Oh," said the listening man," that's sin is it? Now I see. Oh, that's the sinner to be sure! Oh, I have lived without God! Oh, I wish I had my time again! Oh, that I had listened early to such advice!" Light seemed to stream in upon his mind, a sense of danger seized him while he felt for the first time the evil of sin. After a little pause, he thoughtfully said, "Do you really think then, sir, that all the people who have no Bible, Mahomedans, and heathens, and others, perish." "Those who are not blessed with revelation, will never be condemned for rejecting it. Those who are without law will be tried, and, if guilty, will perish without law. But you and I have the light of revelation, and if we reject it, our condemnation will be aggravated indeed. These questions, I admit, are important; but you

You

have no time to spend upon them. say you believe in the divine existence,-in the immortality of man, and acknowledge your sinful state ?" "Yes, I do." "Is it then, in your opinion, at all likely that the ever blessed God should suffer you and me to live estranged from him, and in utter neglect of his authority and law, and not only you and me, but all mankind, and that through successive generations, without taking any notice of it; that he should, in fact, treat his sinful and rebellious creatures as though they were obedient and holy? Could you honour such a being as that?" He answered, "No." "Well, then, he has given us his revealed will to teach us our guilt and our danger, and to assure us that he will vindicate his own honour. But God is good as well as holy, merciful as well as just, he therefore resolves to save sinners, to pardon and to bless them. The Bible, which you have till so lately despised, tells us how God can be just, and yet justify the ungodly; how he can save the transgressor, and at the same time honour his law. And this is the invaluable book which you have neglected!" On these grounds I proceeded as plainly and faithfully as I could to set forth Christ crucified before the dying man, and recapitulating the heads of our conversation, implored him to reflect especially on the latter portion of it, and to look up in prayer to the Saviour for his gracious instruction and blessing; and I would, if he should live, see him the next day.

The following morning, though much weaker than I had found him before, he evinced a most anxious interest in the sole object of my visits. Entering on the conversation himself, he said, "You told me yesterday to pray to the Saviour for his direction and blessing. I have tried to do so;" and he added with perfect emphasis, "but, oh, it is hard work for a dying man to pray, who has never prayed before;" then, with marked and overwhelming emotion, lifting his feeble hands to heaven, said, "All I could say, sir, was-Lord Jesus, have mercy on my poor soul!" Desiring me to pray for him, we united in the exercise, at the close of which he burst forth in the language of fervent supplication, and with intense feeling implored the Saviour of sinners not to reject, but to receive him. From this time he appeared to have hope and to realize peace. His conversation was constantly about Christ, his love, his preciousness, his work. His spirit became calm, and his views of truth surprisingly clear.

As I took leave of him, day after day, never expecting to see him again, he was resting his hopes upon the sacrifice of the Son of God, and rejoicing in expectation of his glory. In this frame of mind he continued, to the astonishment of many who surrounded his bed, till early on the following Sabbath morning, when he died, with the name and the praises of the Redeemer on his lips.

I do not deem it wise, as a general rule, to attach much importance to instances of such late repentance, much less to make them the subject of remark; but this case, as far as my experience has gone, is unique. The evidence of the genuine transition in the last hours of life, from darkness to light, was such as to bear the closest scrutiny, as to disarm suspicion, and to break down, in my breast, a cherished incredulity. Besides watching the interesting scene with all the care I could, with a view to the detection of fallacy or delusion, I enquired of those who were in constant attendance on the patient, whether by night or day, and found that but one theme, and that to him a totally new one, occupied his mind, and that but one solicitude filled his breast. To be found in Christ, and to go to him, constituted the new-born ambition of his soul.

I could not but reflect in leaving the dwelling of one whom in charity I must regard as a dying penitent,-1st. If this man had been a believer in Christ, and in the enjoyment of the hope which the gospel inspires, and I had gone and preached deism to him, is it possible to imagine him throwing away the one that he might accept the other? Did a true believer in Christ ever turn deist in his dying hours? 2nd. What is to be thought of that latitudinarian theology, which attaches no importance to positive belief, which looks upon all men as equally safe, whatever be their principles or their creed, that holds it, for instance, of no importance, as to ultimate results, whether the atonement of Christ or human works form the basis of hope? 3rd. Though true religion had been neglected in this case till the time of death, and though the patient entered amidst its shadows with a "lie in his right hand," he once had a pious mother. Who can trace the connexion, in the profound economy of infinite wisdom and grace, between means and ends, between the anxieties of the praying parent, and the lateborn faith and hope of her expiring sou?

Leicester, Oct. 1848.