THE CHRISTIAN REVIEW AND Clerical Magazine. VOL. II.-1828. LONDON: SEELEY AND SONS, AND SEELEY AND BURNSIDE. MDCCCXXVIII. PREFACE. By the good hand of our GOD upon us we are spared to bring our second year's labours to a termination. Many are the times that our heart has sunk within us, when viewing the vice which abounds without the Church, and the coldness which prevails within it. Hundreds of good men, that we could name, have some of the finest opportunities for preaching a crucified Saviour and converting perishing sinners; but, alas! instead of using them as they might, we see them too often careful and troubled about many things with which they ought to have but little, if any, concern. In the mean while, year after year is passing away; souls are hastening into eternity; and many among the hearers of the truth are, it is to be feared, together with its avowed enemies, sinking lower than the grave! To such, the Gospel has indeed been preached; but, alas! it has proved to them the savour, not of life unto life, but of death unto death. Would to God that the bare possibility of this being the case, with any of the souls committed to their care, did more generally rouse our parochial clergy to exclaim, with an inspired Apostle, "Who is sufficient for these things!" We shall be glad to find ourselves mistaken, but we confess that we have very serious and painful apprehensions, whether that revival of religion, with which we have been favoured since the commencement of the present century, be not in some |