There is no date from beginning to end in the Bible. It comprises some sixty documents, and is supposed to have been written by about forty men; fifty-four miracles are recorded in the Old and fifty-one in the New Testament; total, one hundred and five. The shortest verse in the Old Testament is "Remember Lot's wife." There is one in the New Testament shorter, i.e., John xi, 35, equaled in words, though not in letters, by Thessalonians v, 16, "Rejoice evermore." Then there are two chapters in the Bible alike verbatim, and one book, Esther, in which the Deity is not mentioned.

The vigil was originally the watch kept, with public prayer on the night before a feast, traceable in the very earliest centuries, and is one of the usages against which Vigilantius inveighs, and which Jerome vindicates in his reply, though he admits the abuses that often accompanied it, and which ultimately brought about its suppression. The old observance survives in the Roman Church now only in the matins and lauds and the midnight mass before Christmas, and the term is applied to the day and night preceding a feast. The "watch night" service at New Year's is analogous.

The Society of Friends or Quakers was founded in 1624 by George Fox, a shoemaker, of Drayton, in Leicestershire. They believe in the main fundamental principles of what is called "Orthodox Christianity," but they express their religious creed in the very words of the New Testament Scripture and each member has the liberty of interpreting the words. Their main specialty is the belief of "the Light of Christ in man," and hence they entertain a broader view of the Spirit's influ-ence than other Christians. In morals, propriety of conduct, good order, and philanthropy, the Quakers are a pattern society.

The Tunkers, by corruption Dunkards (but by themselves called "the Brethren"), is a religious sect found chiefly in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. Altogether they number nearly one hundred thousand, and are almost confined to the United States, although small bodies exist in Denmark and Sweden. Yet the sect had its birth in Germany, being indeed a child of the Pietist movement of the seventeenth century; but between 1719 and 1729 all the members, harassed and persecuted at home, had, on Penn's old invitation, removed to Pennsylvania and settled about Germantown and Philadelphia, from whence they gradually spread southward and westward. In their creed the Brethren are thoroughly evangelical.

The Gutenberg (? Schoffer) Bible is the earliest book printed in movable metal type. It contains no date, but a copy in the " Bibliotheque Mazarine," formed in 1648 for the Cardinal Mazarin by G. Naude, and given to the public in 1688, contains the date of the illuminator Cremer, 1456, so that the Bible must have been printed before that date. Only seven copies in vellum exist, but there are known to be twenty-two copies on paper, some of them very imperfect. In 1855 Mr. Quaritch, bookseller, of London (according to the Methodist Recorder) gave $19,-500 for a copy at Sir J. Thorold's; certainly in 1887 he gave $13,250 for the copy in the library of the late Earl of Crawford. One was sold in 1873 for $17,000, and a copy was sold in 1889 for $10,000. A good vellum copy is worth $20,000. Of course it was called the Mazarine Bible because the copy in the Mazarine Library, Paris, gives the approximate date.

The term Apocrypha (a Greek word meaning "hidden", "secret") seems, when applied to religious books or writings, to have been used (1) for such as were suitable, not for the mass of believers, but for the initiated only; works containing the esoteric or recondite teaching of the faith or sect; (2) works the date, origin, and authorship of which were unknown or doubtful; (3) works which claimed to be what they were not, were spurious or pseudepigraphic. When the Apocrypha is spoken of, the Apocrypha of the Old Testament is generally meant. Another large group may be called the apocryphal books of the New Testament.

The Vulgate is the authorized translation of the Scriptures into Latin in use in the Roman Catholic Church. Before the end of the fourth century the Vetus, or old Latin version, called also the Itala (because in use in Italy), had become exceedingly corrupt, and in 382, Jerome, at the request of Pope Damasus, undertook to revise and correct this version. The Gospels were completed in 383, and the whole New Testament soon after; and this revision of the old version is the present text of the Vulgate New Testament. The official edition of the authentic Vulgate now in use in the Roman Catholic Church is that published by Clement VIII. in 1592.

The Trappists are a religious order founded in 1140 in Normandy by Rotrou, Compte de Perche. It was refounded by Abbe de Rance in 1636. It is a reformed Benedictine order. The female order, called Trappis-tines, was instituted 1822. When driven out of France in 1791 the Trappists went to Switzerland and built the monastery called Val-Sainte, which was suppressed in 1811. Fifty-nine monks of La Trappe migrated from England to France in 1817 and settled in La Loire Inferieure. In 1822 the Trappists had sixteen houses in France. Their chief monastery was burnt to the ground in August, 1871. They have several houses in the United States.

Under the name of breviary Roman Catholics understand the book which contains all the ordinary and daily services of their church except (a) those connected with the celebration of the Eucharist, which are contained in the Missal, and (b) those for special occasions, such as baptisms, marriages, ordinations, funerals, etc., which are contained in the Ritual or Pontifical, according as they fall within the sphere of ordinary priests or of bishops. In the Established Church of England, therefore, the breviary would be exactly represented by a prayer-book containing, after the preface, tables, etc., the morning and evening prayer, litany, Athanasian creed, collects, psalter and all the lessons for every day in the year, with the addition of a complete set of hymns for the different occasions.