PREFACE. THE Completion of another volume may seem to demand from the Editors a retrospect of their labours, difficulties, and encouragements. Yet, after forty-one years of persevering effort in conducting the Magazine, on the same principles, and amid circumstances of a varied, and indeed almost ceaselessly changing character, it may be thought that a Preface is not requisite. Compliance, however, with a long established custom is readily yielded, and to the contributors to the work, its readers, and all who have sought to promote its interests and extend its circulation, the Editors gratefully render their most hearty thanks. It is hoped that the contents of this closing volume are found such as to justify previous expressions of solicitude on the part of the Editors that the Magazine should adhere to its distinctive principles, maintain its doctrinal status, and present an aspect of general improvement and increasing usefulness, as an organ of the Strict Baptist denomination. Confessedly, there remains much to be done to render the work all that it is desirable it should be, both in a literary point of view, and as a vehicle of denominational and religious intelligence. And the Editors would again venture to remind their brethren and friends generally, that while they themselves do not shrink from the responsibility attaching to the supervision of the work; much, very much of the efficiency necessary to promote its successful onward course, must depend on the character of the contributions received. A larger supply of pointed, pithy and brief articles, furnished by competent writers, would greatly conduce to the object desired and sought. And if the intelligent members of our churches generally would supply brief reports of occasional public meetings and interesting events relating to the progress and prosperity of the cause of Christ among them, that a greater amount of intelligence from |