PREFACE. ANOTHER year has rolled away since I penned a few words of preface for the former volume of the Local Preacher's Treasury. Again, I would express thanks to the friends who have contributed and subscribed during the year. It has been my aim to supply such materials as I thought would meet the wants of the brethren. How far I have done so, they must be the judges. It were not so difficult to edit a magazine for general circulation, or a magazine for circulation among preachers in general, as it is to edit one for a particular class of preachers, whose ages, tastes, and circumstances differ so greatly. However, I have done my best to spread before them what is wholesome and nourishing, if not tasty and nice. Still, I have not reached my ideal. I hope, however, to do better in following years (practice makes perfect), if God permit, and if the brethren continue their patronage. One thing I may promise that my guests, if I may so speak, shall never have offered them stones for bread, serpents for fish, or scorpions for eggs. If ever there was a time in which those who provide for the pulpit should take direct from the King's Storehouse, it is now. The hungry need bread. The perishing cry for salvation. The King's enemies must be fought with the two-edged sword of the Spirit. With the sling and the smooth stones Goliath must be slain, and not with Saul's cumbersome armour. Considering all that has been said and written about the improvement of Local Preachers, and the necessity of helping them in their work, it might naturally have been expected that more sympathy and co-operation would have been given to this endeavour by ministers and laymen. iv. One or two thousand more subscribers from among the thirty or forty thousand Local Preachers in the Methodist Churches, would enable me to enlarge the Treasury in size, or reduce it in price, or increase its free circulation among local preachers too poor to subscribe, which has been done in a measure during this year, and also to give help to funds for Sick and Worn-out Local Preachers. Will every present subscriber do his best to obtain the above-mentioned increase? I am open to 1ceive from the brethren any suggestions which may make the Treasury more acceptable and useful to them. My wish is, that every Local Preacher should be a "good preacher of JESUS CHRIST, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine."-1 Tim. iv. 6. Brethren, pray for us and for yourselves, that this wish may be realized. EDITOR. St. Albans, November, 1885. |