30 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

pictures of the Bible would find food for thought, if a man’s
life should reach out to seven times seventy years.

But the Bible is a great storehouse of history. It is
crowded with great events and with men and women whose
heroism can never die. And it is just here, in the study of
the lives of these Bible characters, that American boys at
the close of the nineteenth century will find the Bible so help-
ful and inspiring. They will learn from the lives of the boys of
the Bible more of the true meaning and worth of life, than
from any other source, or all other sources put together. _

These boys of the Bible, dead and gone these many
centuries, are living teachers, each with his own great life-
lesson to impart. The first brothers of the world’s young
morning; the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, rocked in the
same cradle, and yet so unlike; the boy of many dreams
and boundless ambition; the young Hebrew rescued from
the Nile; the boy of the sanctuary of Shiloh; the son of
Jesse and his gifted sons; the brave lad who was not
ashamed to pray; and, greatest of all, the Boy of Nazareth,
the great Rabbi and Teacher of the World, will each and
all be found with a wise and helpful lesson for the thoughtful
and inquiring student.

- Before passing on to the study of the character and
career of some of these boys of the Bible, one word more
may be said concerning the helpfulness of the Bible. That
the Bible is a blessed and helpful book, is the universal
testimony of all those who have made it the ‘man of their
counsels,” the “guide of their youth.” Good men and
women by thousands, in all the walks of life, have taken
great joy, on proper occasions, to confess their indebtedness
to the Word of God. The best and most useful men and
women in the world have been, and are, proud of the Bible,