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PREFACE

CHILDREN like to impersonate other people. They enjoy nothing better than to play that for the time being they are some one else. The little girl is mother of her doll. The boy is the big Indian, Massasoit or Samoset; and, if he can don an imita- tion suit of buckskin with fringes and feathers, the illusion is all the dearer to him.

If not carried too far, and if it does not involve impersonations of unworthy characters, such play and pretending are a useful part of education. Why should not this natural element to which the child takes so readily be used in the religious train- ing of boys and girls?

This book is an attempt, and the first of its kind, so far as I know, to teach the Bible stories as auto- biographies. The characters tell their own stories, and the child as he reads can easily imagine him- self to be telling the story of his own life, and will become as interested in it as in the story of Jack the Giant-Killer or the adventures of Cinderella.

The book has been prepared especially with a view to the needs of mothers, Junior superintend- ents, Sunday-school teachers, and leaders of all kinds of children's meetings, and with the desire to enable all such leaders to make the many beauti- ful and touching Bible stories more vivid and graphic, and to impress them upon the child's mind as it could be done in no other way.

It will be found that almost every phase of the Christian life is here illustrated by some character who tells his story in the first person. Courage, kindness, thankfulness, generosity, prayerfulness, love, modesty, filial affection, and scores of other topics are here made concrete and level with the child's comprehension.

Any mother, teacher, or leader can by using these Bible autobiographies learn to chain the child's attention as closely as if telling a fairy story. To let a boy or girl impersonate a Bible character and tell his own story will furnish a pleasing variety in any Junior meeting or Sunday- school class. It will fix it in his memory, and will impress it upon the minds of the children as even the teacher could not do.

If the story-teller can dress in costume, it will be still more effective. A very small amount of the costumer's skill will often be all that is necessary; a fez, a sash, anything unusual, would frequently answer every purpose; and, where nothing of the sort is provided, the imagination of the children will often supply all deficiencies.

Helps to make the Bible stories lively and living are still all too rare, as parents and leaders of children's meetings have often complained, and the author offers this book to her fellow workers for the children, as she tells me, with the hope and prayer that it may make their difficult but exceed- ingly important task easier and more delightful.

The use of the book in the home should not be forgotten. Children in the family circle like to tell stories as well as to listen to them. Then why not let the boy or girl who can read tell father and mother and brothers and sisters one of these stories as a regular Sunday-afternoon exercise or as an adjunct to Sunday family prayers? For a bed- time story no better one can be found than that of a Scripture character personified, who will teach some great truth for the child to try to practise the next day.

A few Bible word-pictures have also been added, which may be used in much the same way as the autobiographical stories.

FRANCIS E. CLARK.