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THE

SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE,

AND

ZION'S CASKET.

1846.

"For there are Three that bear record in heaven, the FATHER, the WORD, and the
HOLY GHOST; and these Three are One."-1 John v. 7.

66

Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints."-Jude 3.
'Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience."-1 Tim. iii. 6.

LONDON:

E. PALMER AND SON, 18, PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCXLVI.

PREFACE.

UPON the eminence of another year's accumulated months, we would again erect our watch-tower, and retiring thereward, communing with ourselves, we would ask ourselves whether during its progress we have been, as Editors of the Spiritual Magazine, profitably employed in our Lord's service?

To gain a satisfactory reply to this, it may be necessary to inquire, what a Magazine deserving the name of Spiritual should be, and what most of the Magazines professedly religious really are. We know assuredly we differ in a multitude of particulars from our numerous brethren. We have never thought it our business to gather industriously and unscrupulously every particle of religious news, and thus cause our pages to be the admired companion of all lovers of religious gossip. We should abhor becoming, like one of our youngest contemporaries, who forgetful of his own soiled garments, is the vehicle of personal slander, the hoarder up of the infirmities of good men, and the chronicler of every passing bickering amongst God's people. We cannot conceive it to be profitable to make our Magazine the repository of prettily told religious tales, or of ingeniously fabricated spiritual experiences. We shun dry elaborate dissertations on disputed topics of unrevealed doctrine: we do not attempt to penetrate thick darkness, to climb invisible heights, or to descend to fathomless abysses. What then is our aim? Simply and plainly to take the humble disciple by the hand, and with the Bible before us, to talk of things concerning the kingdom, and the Way to it; the inheritance, and the Giver of it; the glory, and the Guide to it. We look at the Holy Scriptures as our heavenly road book; and being written for spiritual persons, we are sure that it is written in spiritual language, and when the Holy Spirit, its great Author, condescends to illuminate our minds, and shed a ray of his enlightening influences upon its pages, we rejoice, and are encouraged, and being desirous that our brethren should share likewise in our joy, we hasten to impart to them of our good. Just for this pnrpose was the Spiritual Magazine primarily instituted; just for this is it still carried on; and as the Holy Spirit is no respector of persons, but oftener imparts spiritual light to those whom the world esteems as ignorant and unworthy, and advances to high eminence in divine knowledge they who are strangers to the acquirements of earthly colleges, so we seek and prize communications from the world's illiterate, the sorely tried but often highly taught poor: we duly estimate learning and ability, as hand

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