Morning Stars; Or, Names of Christ for His Little Ones

Ust a week before my dear sister F. R. H.

died, I took her letters up-stairs. Her pretty kittens Trot and Dot were playing on her bed. She was too ill to care about her letters, but was so pleased to get the first page of ##zs book. She looked at it carefully, and with her pencil corrected mistakes. Then she was anxious every reader should have space to add the verses, and asked me to write about it. May I say that she hoped you would read one chapter daily! My dear sister intended writing another book for you, “Evening Stars; or, Promises for the Little Ones.’”’ But, though she is gone, the Promises are left. Will you not search them out in your Bibles every evening, and just say, as she often did, “This promise is so bright, and it is for me.”

MARIA V. G. HAVERGAL.
September, 1879.

To the Readers of “LITTLE PILLOWS,” “MORNING BELLS,” avd “BRUEY.”

Vee to you does not seem the least like writing an ordinary “preface,” all stiff and proper; for so many of you have written to ask me to write you another book, and so many loving messages have reached me from others, that we seem to be “friends,” don’t we? So this comes to you at last, with my love, and many a prayer that it may lead you to look oftener and more steadily at Jesus, the Bright and Morning Star. One thing I want you very much to be quite clear about. No amount of “good little books”’ will do you any good unless they lead you to love the Book of books. If you really love Jesus you ure quite sure to love His word. But one reason why some of you do not love it half as much as you wish you did, is because you do not know enough of it, and you only vead,; you don’t “search,”’ which is what God expressly tells you to do. A capital piece of advice was given by a man who did a very great deal towards leading people to love and know their Bibles. He said, ‘‘ When you take your Bibles, you should be always hunting for something!’’ So I have given you something to hunt for every day. You will see that nearly every time I have quoted:a text I only tell the chapter where it is to be found, and leave a little blank space for the verse. Now, not one of you is to consider your copy of the book complete till you have found out all these verses and put them in yourself with a nice fine pen or sharp pencil! So, you see, I have left yo to finish the book, and thus given you each ‘‘something to do” and something to hunt for, which I hope will be only a beginning of your hunting for a great deal more. Every verse that you find I should like you also to mark in your own Bibles; then you will find them again much more easily, and be often reminded of them in time to come.

Though you will find here thirty-one names of the Lord Jesus Christ, you must not think these are nearly all. Some I had written about before, such as “My King,” “Our Surety,” and others, and the rest had to be left out for want of room. But this is something else to be hunted for. Find out all the rest, and write them at the end of this book. And then, not till then, you may write ‘“/*2nzs /”

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