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THE

GOSPEL MAGAZINE

AND

PROTESTANT BEACON.

66 COMFORT YE, COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE, SAITH YOUR GOD."

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ENDEAVOURING TO KEEP THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT IN THE BOND OF PEACE."
"JESUS CHRIST, THE SAME YESTERDAY, AND TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER.

WHOM TO

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W. H. COLLINGRIDGE, 117 TO 119, ALDERSGATE STREET, E.C.

1864.

PREFACE.

How amazingly rapid is the flight of time! Personally we are more and more astounded in the contemplation.

However our readers in general may feel this, unless they have had some experience of the matter, they can have little conception of the seemingly additional fleetness of weeks and months and years, as realized in connexion with the press. Where publications have statedly to appear, even though it be at intervals of a month, still they are almost uninterruptedly on the mind, and the ever-constant demand upon one's time and attention causes a new month to be, as it were, ever dawning. The same idea-only somewhat enlarged presents itself as respects the year. It is amazing how quickly the closing month appears to present itself, and a new December calls for another Preface.

But, brethren beloved, although we may witness change and vicissitude with respect to time and the world, yet how cheering is the consideration that there is no change whatever in our God. He is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." "With Him is no variableness, neither the shadow of a turning." Oh, how blessed is this fact! Come what change there may in the creature, and although one and another may be called away by the unsparing hand of Death, yet Jesus is the same. He, too, "rests in His love," and "hates putting away." It is as true of Him now as of old, "Having loved His own, which were in the world, He loveth them unto the end."

This, beloved, is something—and how great a something, too which to fall back.

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Be assured, moreover, as we advance onward and homeward, the reality and the blessedness of this truth will be yet more and more tested.

If not as a matter of choice, yet as one of sheer necessity, we believe our God will compel His children to relax their hold of the world. Hence, if from no other cause, the trials and tribulations connected therewith the Lord will so overrule as to compel His dear children to sit more loosely to the things of time and sense. He will cause them, by His all-wise and in His ever-loving discipline, to feel that "this is not their rest; it is polluted."

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