SWIFTLY-FLOWING Time has brought to its close 1878, and it is with sincere thankfulness that we find ourselves with another completed volume of FAITHFUL WORDS before us.
It is our pleasant task to offer our hearty thanks to each Contributor who has helped to fill the pages of our Magazine during the past year. We are also much indebted to the many friends who have helped to make it better known, and more widely circulated.
While we can interchange thoughts, and maintain communication with all who write for FAITHFUL WORDS, it is impossible to know even the names of the numerous Christian friends interested in its circulation. We therefore use this—our only opportunity throughout the year—to suggest to such, that the very best way to increase its circulation is to induce persons to take it in for themselves. Free grants and broadcast distribution do nobly scatter the gospel seed it contains, but when a family can be interested to take in the Magazine regularly, another kind of good follows. A sound gospel heard once a month throughout the year in a house or hamlet is no small thing, and this, numerous instances of everlasting blessing so gained, testify.
The seed scattered broadcast will produce conversion to God, when the Holy Spirit blesses, but more is needed. We have to help, as far as in us lies, those who have heard and believed. The regular reader will be influenced of necessity in a different manner from the casual hearer.
Sow the seed and it will spring up. Enrich the soil and the weeds in the meadow will give way. We have but to lift up our eyes to see so-called Christian publications thrusting-out tremendous efforts to disseminate pernicious doctrine, in order to be made to feel the need of meeting the foe right earnestly.
FAITHFUL WORDS is not and shall not be in anywise controversial, but as there is no better antidote to darkness than light, so is there no surer way of meeting error than by stating the Truth. A rushlight burning in a cottage window during a black night has, as we have heard from their lips, cheered the hearts of shipwrecked men with courage to hold on till day. And, by God’s help, our humble candle shall still burn on.
Fain would we see our Magazine in at least one cottage in each hamlet throughout our country. It must not be forgotten that there are hundreds of villages or clusters of cottages where, as in so many houses of our cities, the gospel is not heard for years together.
We would that our Christian friends—eager in the distribution of the good news of God—might seek, at least sometimes, to sow the seed where it never has been sown before. We can assure them that we have found homes in our favored land where no Evangelist ever enters save FAITHFUL WORDS.
Finally, we would ask for earnest and faithful records of gospel work from those who may be able to send us short accounts of anything of interest which comes under their observation, for to such records will be chiefly due the freshness and the strength of our Magazine, should it be permitted to carry on its work.