A SCRIPTURAL SUM. Add to your faith, virtue; 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 ex pressly 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, held 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; At once, above, beneath, around, All nature, without voice or sound, Replied, O LORD! THOU ART! Christopher Smart, an English Lunatic. It 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 pronun ciation 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 to Cruden, it occurs about eight hundred times. It is true that the word often occurs in Shakspeare without a reverential sentiment; but M. Michelet says it never occurs with a religious feeling (un sentiment religieux.) This statement is almost as It would erroneous as that regarding the absence of the word. be easy for an English scholar to produce from Shakspeare more passages indicative of deep religious feeling than are to be found any French writer whatever. in THE PARSEE, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN. A Jew entered a Parsee temple, and beheld the sacred fire. "What!" said he to the priest, "do you worship the fire?" 'Not the fire," answered the priest: "it is to us an emblem of the sun, and of his genial heat." "Do you then worship the sun as your god?" asked the Jew. "Know ye not that this luminary also is but a work of that Almighty Creator?" "We know it," replied the priest: "but the uncultivated man requires a sensible sign, in order to form a conception.of the Most High. And is not the sun the incomprehensible source of light, an image of that invisible being who blesses and preserves all things?" "Do your people, then," rejoined the Israelite, "distinguish the type from the original? They call the sun their god, and, descending even from this to a baser object, they kneel before an earthly flame! Ye amuse the outward but blind the inward eye; and while ye hold to them the earthly, ye draw from them the heavenly light! Thou shalt not make unto thyself any image or any likeness."" "How do you name the Supreme Being?" asked the Parsee. "We call him Jehovah Adonai, that is, the Lord who is, who was, and who will be," answered the Jew. "Your appellation is grand and sublime," said the Parsee; "but it is awful too." A Christian then drew nigh, and said, "We call him FATHER." The Pagan and the Jew looked at each other, and said,"Here is at once an image and a reality: it is a word of the heart." Therefore they all raised their eyes to heaven, and said, with reverence and love, "OUR FATHER!" and they took each by the hand, and all three called one another brothers! In rebus tantis trina conjunctio mund I S umma salus cunctas nituit per secula terra S.* The letters I. H. S. so conspicuously appended to different portions of Catholic churches, are said to have been designed by St. Bernardine of Sienna, to denote the name and mission of the Saviour. They are to be found in a circle above the principal door of the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, (Santa Croce,) in Florence, and are said to have been put there by the saint on the termination of the plague of 1347, after which they were commonly introduced into churches. The letters have assigned to them the following signification :Jesus hominum Salvator-Jesus, the Saviour of men. In hoc salus-In him is salvation. In times momentous appeared the world's triple conjunction, |