THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS, AND Church Members Magazine. 1851. THAT RECTITUDE which the Inspired Writers usually denominate holiness, is the health and beauty of the soul, capable of bestowing dignity in the absence of every other accomplishment, while the want of it leaves the possessor of the richest intellectual endowments a painted sepulchre. Hence results the indispensable necessity, to every description of persons, of sound religious instruction, and of an intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures, as its genuine source.- HALL. INDUSTRY is not only the instrument of improvement, but the foundation of pleasure. He who is a stranger to it may possess, but cannot enjoy; for it is labour only which gives relish to pleasure. It is the appointed vehicle of every good to man. It is the indispensable condition of possessing a sound mind in a sound body.-BLAIR. THE PROFITS OF THIS WORK ARE DEVOTED TO THE BENEFIT OF ACED MINISTERS. VOLUME VIII. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY JOHN SNOW, PATERNOSTER-ROW. PREFACE. It is always with a feeling of solemnity that we place an additional Volume of the CHRISTIAN WITNESS in the hands of our readers. We cannot hide from ourselves the fact, that many of our friends looked upon the first Number of this Volume that will not see the last. We are also reminded, that it was in equal ignorance of the issue that we ourselves commenced our labours for the year; we knew not but that while we began, another might finish our work. We desire rather to encourage than repress such feelings, since to plan, and to put together each successive Number, as if it were the last, is beneficial both to the operator and to his work. Some such memento is all the more needful to an Editor, who has not the same impressive remembrancers ever and anon before him as the Pastor. The sick-bed, the sepulchre, the family-pew, and the Communion-table, are all constantly reminding the Pastor both of his People's mortality, and his own. It is otherwise with the Editor; his readers, from month to month, drop into the grave in clusters, and the hands that were wont to receive the ever-welcome WITNESS, or PENNY MAGAZINE, are wrapt in the shroud; such facts are of constant occurrence, but he sees them not! For aught that generally comes before him, the circle of his friends and supporters is immortal. We would humbly, earnestly ask of Heaven, for ourselves and our readers, the grace necessary to begin and end the year with feelings appropriate to the circumstances in which we are respectively placed. Throughout the Volume it will be seen that one idea has uniformly predominated during the year—the necessity of a Revival of Piety in the land; and we close the year with even deeper convictions of the paramount importance of this subject. Our readers need not be apprised that it is not our habit to quake at harmless shadows, and raise false alarms; we believe our tendency, in excess, is rather towards the opposite extreme; our firmament is generally without clouds, and cheered by noonday's sunshine. We are apt to put the best construction on everything appertaining to the Church of God, and rather to throw a veil over infirmities than to expose them even to the extent of truth; but to exaggerate is, in our view, allied to an iniquity to be punished by the judges." If, then, we are constrained with the Prophet, to cry out, "My leanness! my leanness! woe is me," it may be presumed it is not without what appears, at least to us, sufficient cause. There is doubtless, we rejoice to think, still much piety in our midst; all things considered, never was there more, however low, than at the present hour. The surface covered is widely spread, but the power which pervades it is mournfully impaired. Ministers of all denominations are bewailing the absence of Divine Power from Christian Ordinances. The great and primary want of the hour, it is agreed upon all hands, is not so much the improvement, or extension, of the machinery of the Church, as a rich baptism from on high, investing with adequate power the present system of means. Never had the Church so large an amount of spiritual apparatus; but still the results are wholly disproportionate to the range and the abundance of the instru mentality. They who know most of the real state of the several Religious Bodies amongst us, will be the foremost, with deep sorrow, to testify this fact. The Pastors mourn it, and so do the more observant among the people, and sigh for the descent of that Power which alone can build up the waste places of our British Jerusalem. |