we have so much reason to be ashamed, may again perplex the meaning and tarnish the beauty of this most august and delightful service. The Author could easily have extended the additional illustrations, which he has appended to the work, by a great quantity of curious matter, illustrative of the history of the ceremony during different ages of the Christian church,-and fitted to exhibit, in a striking manner, the abuses and corruptions, and sometimes the no less hurtful admixtures of dogmatical refinements, to which, in different degrees and in varying shapes, it has in almost all ages been most unfortunately exposed. Although, however, such historical notices might afford amusement, and perhaps information, to certain classes of readers, and might have given to the work the appearance of more extensive learning on the part of the Author, he has studiously abstained from the introduction of all such matter, from a persuasion, that one of the best things which could happen to the Christian world, would be, that all the previous errors of mankind on this subject should be consigned to perpetual oblivion, and that, for himself, he should be doing a far better service to the cause of genuine Christianity, by bringing but one grain of good seed from the mass of chaff through which he must have passed, than if he had appeared with all the refuse of his toil, even though to those who have formed an erroneous estimate of the value and purpose of human learning, he might have seemed to come forth covered with "scales of gold." Indeed, without such additional matter either in the body of the work, or in the illustrations that have been annexed to it, the Author is rather disposed to regret that the entire Treatise has extended to such an unexpected length;-he hopes, however, that there is no part of the work that will not appear to be useful and valuable,—and he has only farther to say, in apology for its bulk, that in this instance, as in all his other publications, he has been instructed by the issue of his labours, that there is a vast difference between the idea of a work, as it first suggests itself to the mind of an author, and while its primitive form is unbroken into subordinate parts, and the appearance which it almost necessarily assumes when the original plan has been carried through all the details of actual execution. It has already been stated, that the Author's labours as a devotional writer are now completed, --and though he was chiefly led to this particular species of composition by circumstances which were not altogether of his own arranging, he cannot help expressing his thankfulness to Divine Providence for having guided him into a walk of literary labour at once so pleasant in itself, and so conducive to the best interests, and, to what he thinks, the most pressing wants of the Christian public at the present time. It is, indeed, the deliberate belief of the Author, that too little attention has been paid, in some of the most enlightened countries of Christendom, to the purification and direction of the devotional feelings and of the pious services of the community,—and that by far the greater portion of the labour which is so freely bestowed in combating errors which scarcely now exist, or which exist only in consequence of the attempts made to destroy them,-and in raising into importance abstractions and distinctions which have nothing whatever to do with that which is really and essentially "the faith as it is in Christ," would be more profitably employed in the truly Christian duty of raising the devout sentiments of men to the level of those pure and beautiful ideas which are involved in the sublime doctrines,-in the grand facts, and in the blessed promises of the Gospel. If the labours of the Author shall in any degree contribute to this end, he shall think himself honoured with no common distinction;—and, at all events, he humbly ventures to take it as a promise to him of good, that his first exertions in the great field of literature have been employed in rearing |