Now let us look at the page opposite the first book of the Old Testament. What do you find there? (The Names and Order of the Books of the Old Testament.) So you see our Bible, the great Book of the world, is not simply one book but a whole library of books. How many books are there in the Old Testament? (If there is time it might be well to let each one count for himself.) So the Old Testament has 39 books. (Follow the same plan with reference to the New Testament, and when the pupils have found that there are 27 books have them find the number of books in the Bible by adding the two numbers. When you have drilled on these figures and facts sufficiently give to each pupil a copy of the Pupil’s Book for Work and Study and show them the first part of Lesson 1, letting them tell what words are to be written in the spaces as the work for the following day at home. Do not let them look ahead at the other lesson, as that is to be taken up after the lesson has been taught.) LESSON 1 In the Beginning =Teaching Material.=—Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. =Pupil’s Reading.=—Genesis 1:1-5. =Memory Text.=—In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1. LIGHT FROM OTHER BIBLE PASSAGES Nehemiah 9:6; Job 12:7-10; 26:7-14; Psalms 19:1-6; 33:6-9; 74:16, 17; 90:2; 95:4, 5; 104:1-35; Jeremiah 51:15, 16; Amos 4:13; John 1:1-3; Revelation 4:11. FROM THE COMMENTATORS What, then, are the truths taught us in these chapters? The first is that there has been a creation, that things now existing have not just grown of themselves, but have been called into being by a presiding intelligence and an originating will. No attempt to account for the existence of the world in any other way has been successful. A great deal has in this generation been added to our knowledge of the efficiency of material causes to produce what we see around us; but when we ask what gives harmony to these material causes, and what guides them to the production of certain ends, and what originally produced them, the answer must still be, not matter but intelligence and purpose.—_The Expositor’s Bible_, _Genesis_, _Marcus Dods_. The record is not a geological treatise, but a hymn of praise to God, magnifying his mighty works, indicating man’s high relation to him, and hallowing the weekly Sabbath, which is man’s day of rest.—_The Handy Commentator_, _A. R. Payne Smith, Dean of Canterbury_.