Ephesians 1:13.
H. F. Witherby.
Second edition, A. Holness.
— Preface (this file)Preface.
It has been thought advisable to carefully revise this book before issuing a new edition.
If our reader should be led by the perusal of these pages to a more prayerful and careful searching of the Holy Scriptures, one great object of the writer will be realized. Our every thought about God, or about ourselves in relation to Him, should be brought to the test of the written Word; we each one must stand before God, and the character of our everlasting future will depend upon our present obedience to the truth. We cannot too strenuously urge upon our reader to search the Scriptures, and yet, while so doing, to look to God for the guidance of His Spirit, so that both heart and conscience may be searched through and through by the Word.
An attempt has been made in these pages to indicate some of the different stages by which God leads His people to a more distinct knowledge of Himself. Many can recall the time when the great hope of their souls was to know the forgiveness of sins; and — before God had made good to them His way of delivering His people from thraldom to self — their anguish, during this struggle after peace with God, and that strife within, which almost threatened to end in despair.
It may be, also, that the knowledge of forgiveness, peace, and deliverance, having been given by God, the heart turns with joy to the memories of those hours when God first unfolded to the soul the fact of the glory of the risen Christ; spread before faith's eye the bright and heavenly things which are the Christian's in Christ; and filled the affections with the invigorating yet patience-giving hope of the Lord's coming again.
Further still, the fact of the Holy Spirit indwelling God's children, and the knowledge of the Father's love, may be amongst the holy things which the reader has been given by God to rejoice in, and to prize.
Our souls grow as we know more of God, and these pages are once more issued with the earnest desire that God, by His Spirit, may use them to help seekers after the truth, to a clearer knowledge of the Christian's privileges, and to a more earnest searching into the exhaustless treasury of His Word.