A SERIES OF

STORY AND CHARACTER SKETCHES

OF THE

GREAT WOMEN WHO HAVE AIDED IN

MAKING BIBLE HISTORY.

BY

PROFESSOR WILLARD DONE.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAM.

1900.

PREFACE.

THE Bible is not only a valuable work from a religious point of view, full of texts and passages in support and explanation of the sublimest religious truths; it is not only filled with moral maxims, calculated to lead man into the highest planes of moral life; it is not only sprinkled with gems of poetry and philosophy, inspiring to the human soul; it is not only a history of God's dealings with the chosen people. Besides all this, it is a record of individual character. Heroes, poets, kings, prophets, statesmen, libertines, tyrants, and almost all other varieties of human character, are depicted in its pages. While in some of the particulars named above, the Bible has been studied and admired and revered by our people, it has not been very well understood in the respect last named. We have paid so much attention to the written and spoken words, or the general history of the men and women of the Bible, that we have

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to a great extent lost sight of the men and women themselves. We know Paul as a religious teacher, Peter as the chief of the apostles, Moses as the law-giver, chiefly through their writings, or their influence on the history of the people at large. But very little do we know of these great men as human beings, with human hopes and aspirations, faults and excellencies, simply because in our reading of their lives this element has been neglected.

This fact seems unfortunate; for one of our most valuable means of moral and religious instruction and improvement is the example set in And if the men the private lives of public men. of the Bible have been thus neglected in our study, the women have been still more neglected. Indeed, it has come to be thought that the Bible neglects women, when in reality our own study is at fault for that neglect. And lessons as valuable, and precepts as important, may be gained from the lives of the women of the Bible as from those of

the men.

It is with these facts in view that the writing of this little volume has been undertaken.

Its

A

aim, therefore, is to present to those who are interested in the sacred record the lives of the great women of the Bible in such a way as to throw the strongest possible light on their characters. special effort will be made to show the lessons which may be drawn from the excellencies and the defects, the successes and the failures of these women. High ideals are to be found here-women as pure and as noble as the world has ever produced. As models for our young people to pattern after, they cannot be excelled. At the same time the negative side will not be neglected. "What not to do," will be made as prominent as it needs to be, though not so prominent as "What to do.”

In the hope that pleasure and profit will follow the reading of this little volume, it is timidly launched on the sea of public favor.

W. D.

September, 1900.