ODUCTION.

When the children gather at mother's knee, and the tiniest finds a
place in mother's arms, and all clamor for a "story," "a story, mamma,"
how lovely is the picture--the living picture--that circle makes!
Love, longing, wisdom, expectancy, faith, shining eyes, lips that move
involuntarily, keeping time to the sweet movements of mother's lips!
Blessed group! Happy mother!

When the stories mother tells are light and meaningless, full of rhyme
and rollick, even their eyes are bright and faces radiant, and her own
sweet face and voice give charm and weight and significance to the
delicious nonsense she rehearses.

Why not give to this receptive and eager audience stories full of
deepest meaning, facts, parables, myths charged with truth? Why not
people little memories with heroes, saints, kings, prophets, apostles?
Why not give stories to story-loving youngsters that will turn into
immortal pictures and be transformed some day into living factors in
the making of character? And why not give them as comparison the babe
of Bethlehem, the boy of Nazareth, the lad of twelve years in the
schools of the Temple, the man of gentle love, the preacher of
righteousness, the worker of heavenly wonders, the Son of Man, the Son
of God, the Prince of Peace?

The Book of books is the children's Book. It is a story book. And the
stories are "true stories." And the lessons to be drawn from them are
numberless, and will come up out of the treasure-house of memory when
mother's eyes are closed and her voice silent.

It is a great thing to put mother and the Book together in Baby's
thought; in the big boy's memory; in the grown-up man's heart and life.

This book is mother's book; to aid her in doing the best and most
lasting work a mother can do to sow seed and set out vines the branches
of which shall reach into the world of spirits, and from which she and
her children may long afterwards pluck fruit together in the eternal
kingdom.

JOHN H. VINCENT.

CHAUTAUQUA, 1898.

CONTENTS.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

CHAPTER.

I. The Beginning of Things
II. The Great Flood
III. Abraham--the Father of the Faithful
IV. Isaac, the Shepherd Prince
V. Jacob, a Prince of God
VI. Joseph, the Castaway
VII. Joseph, a Servant, a Prisoner and a Saint
VIII. Joseph, the Savior of His People
IX. The Cradle that was Rocked by a River
X. Moses in Midian
X