DEAR READERS—We have entered upon a new year, and have commenced a new series of FAITHFUL WORDS. For twenty-one long years we have been enabled to carry on our magazine, and now, having passed our twenty-first year, we have left behind us our life in its form of youth, and have begun a course, which, if pursued, must end in old age. We decided, therefore, to commence afresh; to be, as far as a magazine can be, young once more, so we offer ourselves to you as No. 1.
The work of our magazine is necessarily for the hour in which it exists. When the Master said to the laborers, “Work today in my vineyard," there was not only a day's work for the men to do, but a work which needed to be done that particular day. We can most assuredly say, that the Christian world is not by any means the same this year, as it was twenty-one years ago. But the identical needs of individual hearts and minds exist, the service of the pruning knife, the water-pot, the spade, are all as necessary for today as they were in the years that will never return.
So long as God permits our magazine to exist, we hope and pray we may use faithful words, loving and tender, but true and faithful. Bitter indeed is the so-called kindness which deceives. And nowhere more bitter than in the case of such as speak falsely on spiritual things.
Never, never forget that the truth cannot change. The nineteenth century will have to bow in the end to the truth, as will each and all who live in it, and as have done all previous centuries and all former generations. Tyre and Sidon in their desolation testify to the truth, the ruins of Capernaum proclaim the truth, and the day is at hand when the story of our times shall do the same. The truth about themselves was incredible to those cities—it is apparent to us.
We ask our Christian readers for their kind co-operation. Some can help in one way, some in another. We shall be glad to receive papers for our pages, the character of which can best be judged by reading this present number. Also we shall greatly value such help on the part of those who can do so, as that of giving away a number or two of our magazine to those who have not previously seen it. Above all we should prize the prayers of those who seek its prosperity.
That every blessing for time and for eternity may attend our readers is the sincere desire of
THE EDITOR.