We would earnestly recommend (in response to a suggestion from one of our subscribers) all who study the Word, and especially those who use Bagster’s Bibles or other facsimile Editions to get “Hints on Bible marking” 6d. which can be had from our publisher, or from Messrs. Bagster and Sons, Paternoster Row. They will find many most useful hints in it that will greatly increase the interest of their private Bible Studies.
By far-simile edition is meant a Bible that corresponds page for page with others either of larger or smaller type. The advantage is, that a text is always on the same side and at the same part of a page and thus the mind acquires a local memory for passages which is of great value. The constant habit of always seeing the same text in the same position is a great help in rapidly turning to it. Those who once use these Bibles never leave them, for, if in time a larger print or a small pocket edition is required they still find all the passages unchanged in position, and then when the old Bible is worn out they are equally at home with a new one. Such Bibles are now not only published by Bagster, but by the Oxford Bible Society, and other leading publishers. Bagster however has extended this capital system to other languages, so that the student can have the Bible in German, French, Greek, and other languages, and still find all the texts in their old places.
A good Bible with a clear type, well-chosen references, indexes, and concordance, and a good wide margin or blank pages for notes, bound in a manner that will allow it to lie open and flat, is certainly a great help to Biblical study.
In reference to Bible Query 261, we have received the following interesting note. “Gold, frankincense, and myrrh seem to express the divine intrinsic excellence; frankincense the divine excellence in activity (fragrant in itself and still more so if burnt, forming “ a cloud “ Leviticus 16:22And the Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the vail before the mercy seat, which is upon the ark; that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat. (Leviticus 16:2). 13.) and myrrh appears an intimation of suffering in a purgative way. Thus Esther 2:1212Now when every maid's turn was come to go in to king Ahasuerus, after that she had been twelve months, according to the manner of the women, (for so were the days of their purifications accomplished, to wit, six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors, and with other things for the purifying of the women;) (Esther 2:12) shows the two halves of grace, the first six months being in figure destructive of evil, and the second constructive of good. Myrrh does not enter into incense, the highest figure of the person of Christ but it does into an oil, where His work by the Spirit is partly seen.