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No. 1.

BETHANY, VIRGINIA:
MONDAY, JANUARY 2, 1832.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Vol. III.

IT was twenty-one years on the 15th of July last, since I first stood up in a public assembly to address my fellow-men on the authority and excellency of the holy scriptures, on their perfect adaptation to all classes of men, and alone sufficiency, without human amendments, to guide the sinner into the way of life, and to furnish the saint to every good work. In that address I read the whole of the Messiah's Sermon on the Mount, but dwelt particularly on the conelusion of it, viz. "Not every one who says to me, Master, Master, shalt enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father who is in heaven." The parable of the wise and foolish builders, the foundations of the rock and the sand, were my topics that day. To these themes my attention has ever since been turned; still, I trust, progressing in knowledge, and waxing bolder in the work of reformation as my age and experience advance. Too young, for many years after my commencement, to achieve much, but little was done: for neither wisdom nor prudence are expected from youth; and influence never can precede, but must, in the order of things, depend upon, and follow after character. Sanguine, however, that the time was fast approaching that human platforms and human religious establishments must yield their place to the faith once delivered to the saints, and that the Apostles would soon hurl from their thrones those usurpers who presumed to legislate for the saints, I had that much faith in God's promises as to address the first congregation formed under the measures of the light then enjoyed chiefly by the instrumentality of my father; I say, I had the pleasure, on their first meeting to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus, to address them from a sentence in the book of Job, viz. "Though thy beginning be small, yet shall thy latter end greatly increase.' This was accommodated to a congregation of some sixty or seventy disciples, a number of whom remain to this present time, but some are fallen asleep. This congregation, composed of believers from different nations and sects, and meeting on the New Testament alone, was supposed to be an omen of that long-prayed-for day, when all the disciples of Jesus will lay aside all their bickerings about human institutions, and unite on the writings of the Apostles of Jesus Christ. Since that time we have continued to follow the truth whithersoever it leads us, never having once deviated from the principles from which we set out. In forming a union with the Baptists we protested against their constitution, and refused to unite with them if any other creed than the New Testament was presented to us. A document of several pages to this effect was presented to the Redstone Association in the year 1813, and is now, or ought to be, in the hand of William

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