The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website.
place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits
PREFACE
This little book pretends to be nothing more than a primer of Bible-reading.
Actual experiment has proved the need and usefulness of such directions as are here given. For a year, week by week, these studies were printed in the columns of The Christian Endeavor World. A call was made for the names of all that would undertake to read the Bible through in accordance with this plan during the year; and without advertisement or urging, more than nine thousand sent in their names. Hundreds and even thousands of these expressed themselves as thankful for the plan, and said that, though they had often proposed reading the Bible through and had frequently set out upon the task, this plan had furnished just the stimulus and aid needed to spur them to its completion.
These Bible-readers were in all parts of America and in many foreign lands. Indeed, the course was translated into several foreign tongues.
Pastors induced their churches to take up the work. Families read the Bible thus together. Sunday - school teachers used the plan as an incentive to their classes for regular home Bible-reading and study. Some that bad never read the Bible for three days in succession, completed the entire course. Some in their eagerness got far ahead, and read the Bible through twice in the year.
The plan was found useful in prisons. Ministers of the gospel testified that even to them it had opened up fresh gospel truth." The Bible bas become a new book to me," was a frequent message.
Though it was understood that the themes for daily meditation suggested by the daily Scripture reading, as well as the hints for further study, were entirely optional, an unexpectedly large number wrote me that they were adding both to their Bible-reading, and found in both great profit.
These suggestions for further study, it will be understood, do not pretend to anything like completeness or scholarship. They are part of a primer, and merely point out a great variety of simple researches that will throw light upon the Bible, and bind its portions more closely together in the mind. Amos R. Wells
Boston, November, 1899.
