Francis E. Clark

The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website. place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 7 THE GATEWAY TO THE HOLY LAND ........................................................ 11 THE LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM ......................................................... 21 JERUSALEM THE JOY OF THE WHOLE EARTH ............................................ 31 ON THE WAY TO NAZARETH .......................................................................... 43 NAZARETH HIS BOYHOOD'S HOME ................................................................ 54 BEYOND THE JORDAN ....................................................................................... 66 AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE .......................................................................... 76 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE ................................................................................. 86 IN THE NORTH COUNTRY .................................................................................... 96 IN AND AROUND ANCIENT SHECHEM ......................................................... 108 FROM JERICHO TO JERUSALEM .................................................................. 119

The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website. place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits TITLE PAGE World Wide Endeavor The Story of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor From the Beginning And In All Lands By Rev. Francis E. Clark, D. D. President of the United Society of Christian Endeavor With Words of Greetings By REV. RUSSELL H. CONWELL, REV. THEODORE L. CUYLER, REV. M. RHODES, REV. DAVID J. REV. 8. 8. TYLER, REV. E. R. DILLE, REV. W. H. MCMILLAN, REV. J. K. MCLEAN, REV. J. F. COWAN, REV. CANON RICHARDSON, REV. F. 8. MEYER (London), REV. THEO. MONOD (Paris), COUNT BERNSTORFF (Berlin). Illustrated with Magnificent full-page half-tone Illustrations and a beautiful collection of other Fine Engravings SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION GILLESPIE & METZGAR, PUBLISHERS, PHILADELPHIA, PA. CHICAGO, ILL.

The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website. place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits 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.

The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website. place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits PREFACE This book is designed to furnish a manual of methods tried and proved, for Junior Christian Endeavor superintendents and other workers. I claim for them no merit of originality or grace of diction, but simply the merit that they have stood the test of experience. There are no theories set forth in these pages simply as theories. They have all been worked in many societies, and most of them have been tried in my own Junior society in the course of a good many years of work with and for the children. One cannot wander around the world, and visit Christian workers in many lands, without consulting as to plans and methods, and whenever I have read or heard of a plan that promised well, or have seen it tried, it has been my custom, "when found, to make a note on," according to the suggestion of the famous Captain Cuttle. This book has been made up in no small part from Junior methods thus collected from many wise workers, who have been able to lead many children into the Kingdom. It is in the hope that these plans may in some way prove useful to others, that this manual of methods is sent out. I trust that it will be found worthy, not only of casual reading, but of actual study by young superintendents who wish to fit themselves for that difficult, but most blessed and rewarding, work of training the boys and girls for Christ and the church. It will, I trust, be used as a text - book in a correspondence school and in other ways by those who wish to make a special study of Junior methods as they have been found useful in actual experience. Admirable helps for Junior Endeavor work have been furnished by Prof. Amos R. Wells, Mrs. Alice May Scudder, Mrs. Ella No. Wood, Miss Kate H. Haus, and many writers for many years in The Christian Endeavor World, but it has been thought by many that there was still room for a comprehensive manual of Junior methods, which should cover the whole field of Junior work, at the same time leaving out methods of doubtful utility and those that can be used only in exceptional circumstances. The Junior Christian Endeavor societies are rapidly multiplying all over the world; the Master is blessing the faithful efforts of earnest workers for the children along these lines; and this phase of Christian effort gives promise of great and growing usefulness in the future. May this book add something, though ever so little, to the efficiency of Junior work and Junior workers in the wide field of Christian activity.

The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website. place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits INTRODUCTION THE volume which is herewith presented to the public is the result of a suggestion made by the President and faculty of Auburn Theological Seminary, that I should prepare a course of lectures on Christian Nurture with especial reference to the Society of Christian Endeavor as a means of Christian training. Much has been written on this subject, but never to my knowledge has there been a systematic effort to set forth the great principles of Christian nurture as they are related to the modern young people's movement. However imperfectly I have succeeded, this volume is an attempt in this direction. Much new light has been thrown upon child nature by recent studies in psychology that tend to establish the principles which in a practical way have been confirmed by the experience of a multitude of busy pastors during the past twenty years. These lectures were delivered first at Auburu, then at Oberlin, and afterward in an abbreviated form at the Congregational Seminary of Chicago, at McCormick Seminary of the latter city, and also in the schools of the prophets at Andover, Bangor, Newton, Rochester, New Brunswick, and in the Union Seminary of New York. They have often been received by faculty and students with a favor which I felt was beyond their desert, but which, however undeserved, has encouraged me to accept the further suggestion of the President of Auburn Semi- nary, and prepare them for publication with the hope that in their printed form they may still accomplish something for the advancement of the Kingdom among the young. In the Appendix will be found. much information concerning the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor and its later developments, which has not before been brought together within the covers of one book. This method of Christian nurture seems to be receiving the renewed and continual blessing of God. Nearly four mil- lions of young people are being trained in such schools of Applied Christianity, and millions more have graduated therefrom. The Society is constantly growing in numbers, and I believe in spiritual grace, in America and in every other land. It will soon be twenty-one years old, and as this society "comes of age " and enters upon its years of strength and maturity, I would ask the prayers of every reader of this book that it may in the years to come modestly, efficiently, and more fully than in the past, prove a training-school for the Church of the Future. FRANCIS E. CLARK. BOSTON, MASS., December, 1901

The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website. place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN There are two kinds of books. One kind couldn't be helped. The other kind could be helped, but their writers were compelled to write, by a sense of duty to a cause or an idea, or they were written with an eye to the royalties. Not that one kind is nec- essarily any better than the other. The author of the couldn't-be-helped book may maunder on about his favorite subject as a lover babbles about his mistress, never quite happy unless he can find a sympathetic ear into which he can pour her charms. The author of the could-be-helped book may bring to his tasks the research of a student and the industry of a lifetime, and produce a work that the world will not willingly let die. But I venture to say that the author of the couldn't-be-helped book will enjoy himself more while he is at work on it, and will not quarrel with the world if his book doesn't prove to be a "best seller." I will confess without a blush that this book is of the latter class. I have come un- der the spell of the out of doors on the old farm. It would be hard not to write about it even if nobody read what I wrote. Like an old minister whom I once knew, who, after he retired from active service, though he never expected to preach again, still wrote a sermon for his barrel every week, so I should be inclined, if worst came to worst, to write about my farm, even if my essays were to be forever confined to the unsympathetic em- brace of a drawer in my study desk. How- ever, a number of partial friends have ex- pressed their pleasure in some of these es- says, when published in various periodicals, and it requires but a slight amount of such en- couragement to incline one to -bind the chil- dren of his love between boards and give them to the world. I have, too, a purpose not altogether egoistic in their publication, and that is that other men and women, en- couraged by my own experience of the joy, the comfort, and the health that come from an old farm, may feel its lure, learn its joy, and experience its health-giving comforts. F. E. C.