PUBLISHED BY JOHN MASON, WESLEYAN CONFERENCE OFFICE, 14, CITY-ROAD; THE EDITORS TO THEIR CORRESPONDENTS AND SUBSCRIBERS. If the successive Numbers of this Magazine have promoted, in any good degree, the interests of personal godliness; and if the truth has been profitably illustrated in its leading departments; all the glory is due, and is now humbly ascribed, to HIM "from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed." The Conductors have aimed, first of all, at rendering homage to "the engrafted word, which is able to save the souls" of all who "receive" it "with meekness." It has been their happiness, while maintaining the supremacy of that word, to set forth illustrations of its power in the holy living of believers, and to exhibit "a great cloud of witnesses" who have in death glorified "JESUS CHRIST, THE SAME YESTERDAY, AND TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER." This is their answer to those who examine the claims of Christianity, or of Protestantism, or of that Evangelical Communion which these pages represent. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?" Modern unbelief has changed its tactics; and, on the other hand, the assumptions of the Man of Sin have been strangely revived. It is ominous that, simultaneously with these events, the energies of Protestant churches have been, to a serious extent, neutralised, or diverted by the necessity of repelling faction and disorder within their own bounds. Such are the "wiles" of our ancient enemy. We might tremble, but for the assurance that there is One greater than all that can withstand us;-One who says to His church, "Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake. . . . No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of Me, saith the LORD." |