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PRIMITIVE CHURCH

MAGAZINE,

Advocating the Constitution, Faith, and Practice of the
Apostolic Churches.

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ARTHUR HALL & CO., 25, PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCLI.

LONDON:

BRISCOE, PRINTER, BANNER STREET, FINSBURY.

PREFACE.

THE Editors of the Primitive Church Magazine, at the close of another year would unite with their readers in giving hearty thanks to Almighty God for all the mercies which they have experienced. Upon the boundary line which separates the present from the coming year let each of the Lord's servants raise his Ebenezer, and anoint it with prayer, and pour out upon it a drink offering of thanksgiving and praise. Sure we are that the Editors of this Magazine have special reason to do so; for the commencement of this year found both of them in much weakness, and one in deep personal affliction; but it leaves them both, thank God, in the full exercise of their bodily and mental faculties, and in the enjoyment of a goodly measure of health and strength. 66 Ebenezer," we say again, "Ebenezer." "Hitherto the Lord hath helped us." Brethren, beloved in the Lord, help us to praise Him, and pray for us, that we may be assisted with wisdom and grace from on high, that we may be valiant for the truth upon the earth, that the Lord's blessing may rest upon our labours, that we may be faithful unto death, and at length, through infinite mercy, receive that crown of life which fadeth not away.

In reviewing their labours during the year that is about to close, the Editors of the Primitive Church Magazine discover, on the whole, much cause for gratitude and encouragement. Their encouragement arises not from the sunshine of human favour, nor from the breath of popular applause. But it arises from the sense of the divine approbation they have in the course which they are pursuing, from the deep conviction they possess that it is the cause of God and of truth which they are seeking to promote, and that in so doing, they have the sympathy and support of a large and increasing number of the Lord's faithful servants and loving disciples throughout the land.

It is an indisputable fact, that the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel, which humble man in the dust, and exalt the grace and power of our Sovereign Lord and Saviour, are, to a fearful extent, being undermined and explained away, and that the ordinances of Jesus Christ, and his authority in his own house, the church, are lightly set by, whilst the lax and latitudinarian spirit of These tenopen communion is seeking to diffuse itself in every direction. dencies, so characteristic of the age, are manifest, more or less, in every portion of the professing church of Christ; but they are unquestionably most actively It would developed among the churches of the Baptist denomination. seem as if the elements of good and evil, of truth and error, of heaven

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