Fragments of Experience / Sixth Book of the Faith-Promoting Series. Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints

Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints.
JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR OFFICE, Salt Lake City, 1882.
In issuing this, the Sixth Book of the FAITH-PROMOTING SERIES, we trust that it will meet with the same kind reception that its predecessors have. Perhaps no books that have ever been published in our Church have become so popular in so short a time as the volumes of this Series which have already been issued. They have tended towards supplying a want which has long been felt in our community, and we feel assured that they have done a great amount of good.
Young minds, as a rule, are not attracted by those publications which treat specially upon doctrine. They are usually too profound for young people to grasp and fully comprehend the ideas that are contained in them. To the person with fully matured mind and well-developed reasoning faculties they may appear ever so simple, and even fascinating, but to most young people they are uninteresting, to some positively distasteful. And yet there is scarcely a child but can be taught principle in the form of narrative, wherein the application is made for him in scenes from real life, and appreciate it. There is no more sure way of instilling into the mind of a child faith in God and in the work which He has established upon the earth than by illustrating it with incidents from actual experience. The lesson, too, is likely to be all the more effective in the persons whose lives are held up for examples are those with whom the child is acquainted and in whom he has confidence. The lives of many of the Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abound in incidents which, if written and published, would tend to inspire those who might read them with faith in God and a spirit of emulation. We hope a more general interest may soon be felt throughout our Church in writing up such incidents. That the host of children now growing up in the valleys of the mountains appreciate and are ready to profit by their perusal there can be no doubt.