dealings and threatenings to our land. The
Christians of Britain ought to consider, that there is a warning voice
of Providence, not only in the tumults of the people, and in the
terrors of the cholera around them, but even in the publication of
this Journal. It is not for nothing that God has moved Mr. Groves, as
it were, to an advanced post, where he might encounter the enemy
before them. The alarm may have, in a measure, subsided,[6] but if the
people of God are to be ever patiently waiting for the coming of their
conquering King, this implies a patient preparedness for those signs
of his coming, the clouds and darkness that are to go before him, in
the very midst of which they must be able to lift up their heads
because their redemption draweth nigh. To provide for the worst
contingencies is a virtue, not a weakness, in the soldier. That
Christian will not keep his garments who forgets, that in this life,
he is a soldier always. No army is so orderly in peace, or so
triumphant upon lesser assaults, as that which is ready always
for the extremest exigencies of war.

To those who are looking for the glorious appearing of our great God
and Saviour, Jesus Christ, this volume will exhibit indications of the
advancement of the world towards the state in which he shall find it
at his coming. The diffusion in the east of European notions and
practices; the desire on the part of the rulers to possess themselves
of the advantages of western intellect and skill; and on the side of
the governed, the conviction of the comparative security and comfort
of English domination; the vastly increased intercourse between those
nations and the west, and the proposals for still further accelerating
and facilitating that intercourse: all these things mark the rapid
tendency, of which we have so many other signs, towards the production
of one common mind throughout the human race, to issue in that
combination for a common resistance of God, which, as of old, when
the people were one, and had all one language, and it seemed that
nothing could be restrained from them which they had imagined to
do,--shall cause the Lord to come down and confound their purpose.
Already has this unity of views and aims, with marvellous rapidity,
prevailed in the European and American world; the press, the
steam-engine by land and water, the multiplication of societies
and unions, portend an advancement in it, to which nothing can
set limits but the interventio