Answer.

WE are much pleased with our little correspondent's letter, and are very glad that he and some of his companions read the Bible so attentively. We shall cheerfully answer this, and every other question we may receive; and we hope neither John, nor any other Sunday scholar, will ever be ashamed of confessing ignorance, in order to gain knowledge.

John observes, first, That the name of the Lord is often in large letters, thus-Lord.

Now John doubtless knows that JEHOVAH is one name by which Almighty God is called in the Bible; and he will remember for the future, that whenever he sees the name LORD, thus printed, in his Bible, the word used in the Hebrew language, in which the Old Testament was written, is Jehovah.

The reason why the name LORD is put instead of JEHOVAH is this; the latter is one of the most glorious names of God; as may appear, both from its signifying one of his most wonderful perfections, namely, that He exists of himself, which no other being does, and from the solemn manner in which it was made known to the children of Israel, Exodus vi. 1-3. On this account the Jews treated this name of God with more reverence than the others, and became afraid even to utter it; so that when they met with it in the Seriptures they passed it over, and instead of it said,

the LORD.

The great and good men who many years ago translated the Bible into English, followed the example of the Jews; but in order to preserve some distinction, wherever the LORD,' was put instead of 'JEHOVAH,' it was printed in large letters, as John has observed. This seems a proper place to add, that neither of these, nor any other of the names of the

SCRIPTURE GEOGRAPHY.

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Almighty, must ever be used in a trifling manner; but always with seriousness and holy reverence, as we are taught in the Third Commandment.

Next, with respect to the Italic, or what John calls small letters, we must refer again to the translation of the Bible from other languages into English. Through the difference of these languages, it is impossible to make them answer to each other word for word; but the good translators were determined that we should know exactly which are the very words of the blessed God, and which were put in by themselves to make the sense quite plain in our language; and therefore they put their own words in Italic or small letters. John will find accordingly that these words are very few and short, serving only to make a sentence more plain, without altering the meaning. So Psalm xxv. 15. “ Mine eyes [are] ever towards the Lord." Or if we should think a text would read better without the Italic words, they may be left out without altering the Scripture. The text John has quoted, for instance, may be thus read, "Neither shall any pluck them out of my hands," omitting the word man; and then the declaration will be, that not any being whatever, whether man or devil, shall pluck the people of Christ out of his hands.

ILLUSTRATION OF SCRIPTURE.

GEOGRAPHY.

A Conversation on the Creation.

To the Editor of the Sunday Scholars' Magazine.

DEAR SIR,

Not many Sabbaths since, I read over to my class,

consisting of children from ten to fourteen years of

age, the first chapter of Genesis, and endeavoured to explain to them the account of the creation. At the close of the conversation, I had the satisfaction to find that their knowledge was increased, and that they seemed to understand better, and to be more deeply impressed with the all-important truth of the being of God, from the humble attempt to explain his wonderful works.

Should you think the conversation, nearly as it occurred, worthy of insertion, you will probably receive other communications of the same kind from

Your friend and fellow-labourer,

TERTIUS.

TEACHER. You, my dear children, have just been reading an account of what is called the creation of the world. The very first verse of the Bible tells us more than all the world could have told us without that blessed book. The heathen philosophers, that is, people who took great pains to find out every thing they could about the earth and heavens, knew not by whom, or how, or when the world was made. Some of them were foolish enough to think it made itself; but the Bible teaches you, that, "In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth." And what do you think is meant by the heavens ?

CHARLES. The place where the angels are.

TEACHER. No: that is not what is meant here; the heavens where the angels dwell, were created long before those here spoken of.

JOSEPH. Does it not mean what we see over our heads at night;

JAMES. And in the day too; only we don't see the stars because it is so light.

TEACHER. You are right;-the heavens you see

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above your heads are those here meant; and recollect when you look at the fine blue heavens, with the stars so beautifully placed in them, the great God made them all. But what do you think is meant by the earth?

WILL. The dry land, I suppose.

TEACHER. What! can none of you tell me better than that? The earth does not here mean land only, but the whole world, both land and water. You have seen the meadows around the town, when they are flooded in the winter ;-well, then, there is about as much water to land in all the world, as there is flood to the high dry ground then, that is, about three times as much water as there is land.

JOHN. But is not the world a great deal bigger than what we see? William says, that if he gets on the top of a high hill he can see it all.

TEACHER. That's a mistake of William's; the world is indeed a great deal larger than you can well form an idea of; you know it is a mile from St. Ann's to the other end of the town. Now the earth, which is round, about the shape of an orange, is 25,000 of those miles round, and 8000 straight through.

WILLIAM. What, sir! could you bore a hole through the world?

TEACHER. No, William; I did not say that we could do it. But I was going to tell you, that you have read that the world, large as it is, was made in one day; and perhaps in one minute. Now, what an infinitely powerful and glorious Being must he be who could create so great a world by his command! But in order that you may better understand what the world is, I will shew you this little picture of one half of it, which is called a

map*. You know you can only see one half of an orange at a time; and I shall shew you now a view of only one side of the world; if you pay attention, and endeavour to understand what we are now talking of, I may perhaps shew you the other half, and a great many important things that are in the world, at another time.

In this little map or picture, you see that the earth is made of land and water. The land is marked Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, which are the names of the four principal parts of the world, and are called continents. The greatest part of the water which appears in that half the world which you here see, is called the Atlantic Ocean. An ocean is a vast quantity of water, many hundreds or even thousands of miles across.

Now it is quite necessary that you should understand these great parts of the world first; and then

*The map, and that part of the conversation which refers to it, have been introduced in order to make the subject still more plain.