Preface

This little story like all the others written by me was first read to my own Sunday evening congregation in the Central Church, Topeka, Kansas.

The questions in the story are literal copies of the questions actually asked during the reading of the story by the young people in my own congregation. Every Sunday a list of written questions were handed me by the young people and during the week I put them into the chapter of the story read at the next Sunday evening service.

This fact accounts for the nature of the questions asked. There has been no attempt in this little story to give long, complete, exhaustive answers to wise, theological, or deeply philosophical questions. If the answers seem sometimes to be very incomplete it is simply because I intended them to suggest rather than exhaust the subject in each case. If the questions seem sometimes to be lacking in depth or power it is simply because they are questions that living people often ask. The reader of this story will please remember that the story was planned and written and read first of all for a living audience of my own, whose needs I was trying to meet as I knew them. The story was helpful to my own young people when it was read to them. I send it out in the printed form praying that it may add, even a little, to the Christian life of young people everywhere.

CHARLES M. SHELDON

Dedication

Topeka, Kansas, Central Church, 1899. This book is dedicated, with many good wishes, to Mr. J. R. Stilner, the original publisher of "In His Steps." I owe him a debt of gratitude for the spirit in which he has undertaken the publication of that book and other volumes of mine, and it adds to the distinct pleasure, of our business relations to know that a personal friendship has grown out of them.

Charles M. Sheldon
Central Church
Topeka, Kansas
April 19,1899

~ End of Preface and Dedication ~