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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. CHRIST BLESSING LITTLE CHILDREN (Frontispiece.) 2. JOSEPH SOLD

3. JOSEPH INTERPRETING DREAMS IN THE PRISON

4. THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK 5. THE MEETING OF JACOB AND JOSEPH

6. MOSES IN THE BULRUSHES

7. MOSES BEFORE PHARAOH

8. THE BRAZEN SERPENT

9. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS 10. THE RAISING OF JAIRUS'S DAUGHTER

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9 N060

TO THE OLD FOLKS.

MANY persons will be surprised, as the compiler of this little book was, to learn that there is no such work already in use. There are, it is true, many children's books containing Bible stories told in modern language, but the objections to Bible stories so told are manifold. No language is so simple or so condensed as Bible language, and any paraphrase of it must either spread the same amount of matter over a larger surface, or lose some portion of the matter itself in keeping it within the same limits. Either one or two only of such amplified paraphrases suffice to fill a child's book, to the exclusion of others, or the book contains a number of stories which are only half told. Again, it is almost impossible, in rewriting a story, not to tinge it with the cast of mind and peculiar religious opinions of the rewriter. Parents have not infrequently, therefore, objected to such paraphrases, that their teachings were not such as they believed were to be found in the story itself, or were sometimes not in accordance with their own views of religious truth.

There are other children's books containing one or more Bible stories, or parts of stories, given, as in this book, in Bible language; but the compiler of the present collection has been able to find none which aimed at the same completeness.

In the following pages the Bible stories have been given in the language of the Bible, not amplified, nor abbreviated, nor paraphrased, but simply as the Bible tells them. Nor have there been "morals" tacked on to the

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