unavailing were all the efforts of human malignity; and how feeble a thing is human nature, though armed with power and pride, when striving to stem the progress of divine truth. In the midst of enemies, from the throne downwards, all along shewn to be so contemptible in themselves, when the moment fixed for victory has come, the reader will share in the triumphs of a conquest as perfect, as it seemed improbable.
But even from the commencement, and down to our own times, or the close of the second volume, some such history has become positively essential to a just estimate of our present peculiar condition as a Nation, now by far the most responsible under heaven. It may, and it will furnish motives to action, such as can be drawn from no other retrospect. It forms a key, if not the only one, to our highest imperative obligations; and it may well be pondered, as the path by which Jehovah led our forefathers, in a way of his own devising, with more than "the pillar of a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night." In this view, the history, though never written before, and therefore not understood, can never be out of date. It involves the commencement and continuance of a Cause, which is but pursuing its course in our own day, not only to a wider extent, but with greater energy than ever before, and yet to be pursued with greater still.
In conclusion, the author, it will be evident, is far from placing any reliance on the mere dispersion of Bibles, even by the million; but although no man can measure the consequences of the immutable standard of divine truth having been exhibited to the eye of this nation, the spirit of the age loudly demands, that the history of that exhibition should now be more accurately known. Once understood, it must be left to the judgment of every discerning reader, whether, at the present crisis, in such unparalleled possession of the Sacred Volume, British Christians can close their eyes with impunity on the existing state of other nations-the condition of a world.
EDINBURGH,
19th February 1845.