PREFACE..

IN compliance with what is now a time-honoured custom, we close our volume for the year with a brief address to our readers. We have endeavoured to maintain the same principles which, from the first Number until now, have been made prominent in the Christian Observer, and in the same catholic spirit. And we have no reason to complain of the treatment we have met with. We have many opponents, whose errors we deplore, but, so far as we know, no personal enemies. We have endeavoured to speak the truth; but, as the Apostle teaches, to speak the truth in love. It is one happy symptom of the times, that Christian men can now carry on theological warfare without personalities and without bitterness. At the same time, it is instructive to observe, that the further men secede from the truth, the more personal and bitter they become. Popery has witnessed no improvement in this respect, and modern infidelity can still sneer with all its ancient vulgarity.

Yet our task has been a painful one. Amongst the ranks of those who now swell an apostasy to Rome, either open and avowed, or the more dangerous to its victims because concealed under a professed attachment to the Church of England, are many who did walk well. And even amongst those who have accepted Dr. Colenso as their leader, there are some, chiefly very young men, who were reared in Christian families, and once made a profession of Evangelical religion. During the past year, both of these parties have displayed great zeal, and