PRINTED BY J. BARFIELD, WARDOUR-STREET, SOHO;

AND SOLD BY

B. J. HOLDSWORTH, ST. PAUL'S-CHURCH-YARD.

1822.

PREFACE.

HAVING finished the labours of another year, the Conductors of the Baptist Magazine again address their numerous friends in this Preface to the Fourteenth Volume of the Work.

To our esteemed Correspondents, whose valuable communications have so materially assisted us, we offer our sincere acknowledgments. Our warmest thanks are due to the Readers and Supporters of the Publication, and we beg leave to present them particularly in the name of those Widows who have reaped the pecuniary benefit.

Those who have honoured our pages with a perusal, we hope have derived from them both information and pleasure. As usual, the operations of Christian zeal and benevolence have occupied such a space as to render the Magazine an important and effective auxiliary in the cause of God and truth.

The Missionary Herald and Irish Chronicle, together with the occasional Reports of the Baptist Home Missionary Society, and the regular detail of events, have furnished a considerable portion of that Intelligence which is so grateful to the religious public: and in the retrospect of the year, we discover abundant cause for thankfulness to Him who has not suffered his servants to labour in vain, and spend their strength for nought, but has crowned their efforts with his blessing, both at home and abroad.

The Departments of the work containing Essays on various important subjects, and Reviews of useful books, we have endeavoured to make the medium of just and scriptural sentiments; while the records of mortality

comfort and encourage the pious reader, by bearing testimony to Divine faithfulness, and exhibiting some traces of the footsteps of them who have adorned the gospel, and by faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

In a page to be prefixed to the Volume already before the public, it may be considered out of place to give a pledge which our future Numbers must redeem; but the Editors assure their friends, that, with a scrupulous regard to economy, they are determined to increase their efforts to improve the Publication.

We feel grateful for the extensive patronage we have enjoyed; but from the well known state of many of our churches, and the prosperity of the denomination at large, (for which we desire humbly to adore the Great Head of the church,) we are persuaded the Magazine might be much more widely circulated.

Many of our brethren in the ministry are, through an indulgent Providence, free from those painful anxieties which others feel, relative to the support of those excellent females, whom their death may leave "widows indeed." It is not, however, unreasonable to expect the co-operation of all in a miscellany so intimately connected with the interests of religion in our churches, and the proceeds of which are appropriated to purposes so truly important and benevolent.

It would be of essential service if our ministers would take some opportunity, in the course of the month, of publicly reading this Preface, and recommending their friends to commence taking our Numbers with the new Year!