PREFACE, BY THE EDITOR. A Theological Review highly esteemed on the Continent-the " Archives du Christianisme,”commences an article in its number for May, 1824, on a work of one of the Genevese divines, with the following observations:-" It is a happy circumstance," says the writer, "for a Church to observe among her junior members, the spread of that spirit of charity and of zeal, which entitles her to entertain the highest hopes of the rising generation. But, perhaps, it is an advantage by no means less deserving of her regard, to be able to boast among her older leaders, men who may be justly called the patriarchs of the faith. This remark applies, with peculiar force, to the important period in which we live. Those grey-headed men who have been found faithful amidst the general corruption, exhibit a brilliant attestation to the faith which, in their infancy, they received from their fathers. They stand forth as witnesses, that those divine principles of our religion, which, though new champions proclaim them with new zeal, so far from being, as the world would term them, novelties, are, on the contrary, no other than the old Gospel ground which our ancestors have trodden before us. Such veterans in the service of Christianity, a remnant of whom is found in the bosom of every Church, serve as links to connect the epoch, which, beginning at the Reformation, expired amidst the disorders that darkened the closing years of the last century, with the new era which, taking its birth from that disastrous crisis, and fertilized and secured by the diffu sion of genuine scriptural principles, promises to disseminate Christianity through the world, with a purity and copiousness such as have hitherto been unknown to the Church. Their apostolic influence is yet needed among us, to restrain the excesses of a zeal not, perhaps, always sufficiently enlightened; to set before their younger brethren lessons such as it would not be possible for them to receive with too much earnestness; and to instruct every class by their example and their precepts, that the spirit with which God endues his servants is a 'spirit of power,' indeed, but of love' also, and of a sound mind.' The writer then proceeds to particularize the Church of Geneva as peculiarly happy in being enabled to number in the lists of her leading members, not a few of those justly venerated men who, after having explored the fields of science, come and place the treasures which their labours have collected there at the foot of the Cross of Christ. At the head of these ve |