The National tribune., 1892-12-08
SUNDAY MEDITATION,
The Bible as the Foundation Of Our
Ecclesiastical and National AdVan-
tageS.

ldStS.
No lesson has been designated for Dec IS.
Each Sunday school may have either a review
or some subject self-selected. We would suggest
q study of the names for the Bible. If familiar
with these we shall see the Holy ScriptoTe
from different points and be able more !s.'is 70 !
take it all into comprehension. Each name
applied to the Bible will set US to thinking of
it in several of its more conspicuous and i'm
portaut relations to us. We shall also have an
illustration Of the richness of our English Ian
guage.
The Bible is the special textbook Of the
Church. 1t is the foundation Of our ecclesias-
tic and National advantages By its touch or
kiss oath is made sacred and violation con-
verted into not only crime. but sacrilege- 1t
is present in our courts of Justice. and its very
presence is an admonition against the commits
sion of wrong. A part of the inauguration
services of the President of the United States
consists in n reverential recognition Of the Holy
Scriptures. There may be different views held
as to the Interpretation of particular paragraphs
of Gods Word but we all agree as 10 the in
6uence of the Bible in making for righteous
ness
Some readers of this Meditation may have
heard the famous Lecturer John b. Cough. In
one of his grand speeches at Exeter Hall, Eng
land, he said After speech IN Boston,
short time ago, lady came to me- the daugh-
ter of the Rev. DR.. Choues and said, My
father is dead, but he was always collecting
curiosites, and he has happened to light on
your mothers Bible in Bristol l had resided
there % years ago and pleased was TO hear
the Bible was found. / had it sent to me by
expres5-train. There were the names: Jane
Gilbert that was my mothers name before
| marriage, born Aug. IL, 1776'; John Cough,
present from his mother, on his leaving Eng
land for America John Cough. born Aug.
| 22, 1917 Il held my Bible in my hand / re-
membered how l bad seen that mother with
| her lips white with hunger, and / recollected
how she took her iron trimmed spectacles from
her eyes to wipe away the tears as she turned
page after page. l saw her marks When the
| poor and needy seek water and there is none,
and their tongue faileth for thirst, the the
| Lord will help them, the God of Israel will
not forsake them; with hundreds Of passages
more like that, all blessed promises, marked IN
| that Book. That mothers Bible brought her
history before me- There remains no token
| to mark her last resting place, no hearse and
| mourners followed her to the grave; she was
followed by myself and sister alone and with
out prayer she was consigned to the dust.
| But she left her children the legacy OF moth
| er's prayers and the Lord God Almighty as the
| executor of her last will and testament and
| though that poor little body of schoolmistre5s
| has gone before, and her spirit has taken its
| flight to its eternal home stand before you
| tonight to declare that if | have ever accom-
! plished anything in the world, if have ever
| done aught of good, what I am and what l
| have DONE by the grace of God, has been
| through the influence of that mother"
| We find here two sweet commandments
| of the Bible, the other of the mother who
| taught it, who lived il, and who at length left
it an inheritance to her son. When Sunday
school teachers are impressing their classes Of
| boys with lessons from the Sacred Scriptures let
them recall the case of Cough. Instructions
| are not lost. Bible lessons stick. Do not be
afraid of the charge now sneeringly made in
| few obscure quarters-the charge Of Bibliolatry.
Theodore Parker said There is not boy
on all the hills of New England; not girl
| born in the filthiest cellar which disgraces
! Capital in Europe, and cries to God against the
| barbarism of modern civilization; not boy
nor girl all Christendom through, but their
lot is made better by that great Book"
James Freeman Clark declared: Kingdoms
| fall. institutions perish civilizations change,
human doctrines disappear but the imperish-
able truths which pervade and sanctify the
Bible shall bear it up above the flood of change
! and the deluge of years"
| We add the following from Metternich, the
Austrian statesman (1773- 1859: II read every
day one or two chapters of the Bible; dis
cover new beauties daily, and l PROSTATE my
self before this admirable book; while at the
age of 90 | found it difficult not to think the
! family of Lot unworthy to be saved; NoaIF
| unworthy to have lived Saul great criminal,
and David a terrible man. At 20 tried to I'M
| derstand the Apocalypse; now am sure that
never shall understand it. At the age of 20 a
deep and long continued research in the Holy
/ Books made me Atheist after the fashion of
! Alembert aud Lalande, or q Christian after
| that of Chateaubriand; now / believe. and do
not crticise. / have read too much, and seen
too much, not to know that reading is not nec-
essariJy understanding; that it would be too
bold in me to condemn Whist, through ignor-
ance insufficiency of knowledge | compre-
| bend SO imperfectly. In word believe, and
| dispute no longer"
SUBJECT: THE NAMES OF THE CHURCH TEXT
Book.
The EpqIish Names.
| Almost all books have a variety of appella-
tons by which they are known. This Is we'll
| We have to speak so often of the Bible that If
we were obliged invariably to use the same
title for it our diction in this respect might
seem quite monotonous.
/. The Atphabetie List Of Names.
We have the following names:
/. Bible The.
2. Book (The).
| 3. Book Divine.
d. Book of God Tor of the Lord.
| 3. Book of Life.
| 8. Holy Bible Tor Book.
Z. Holy Library (Thel.
8. Holy Scripture Tor Seriptures).
9. Holy Writ Tor Wrtiug].
10. Law and Gospel.
H. Sacred Word
~ Scriptures (The).
13 Word (of God or of the Lord).
2 Miscellaneous English Names of the Bible.
a. We proceed first to give names found in
Psalm 119.
That is a wonderful Psalm. There is some
word as substitute for the Scriptures in all
the 176 verses, except in verses 122 and 1872.
few so render verse 122 as to understand
the word "good in the sense of the Script
ures. and some have believed the word
name" in verse 1872. another expression syn
onymous for the Bible. We choose, however,
to omit from our list the words good " and
name" found in verses 122 and 1872. Though
the Hebrew language has only about 6000
words, we find in this single Psalm, in the
original, 10 different expressions to be under
stood as substitutes for the word eriptures.
In the outline below the first column gives
the number of different words used i'll said
Psalm for the Holy Scriptures; the second col
umn gives in alphabetical order words so used ;
the third column gives the first verse in which
each such word is found; the fourth column
states the number of times each such word oc-
ours: the fifth column is list of the Hebrew
words Anglicized: