PREFACE.
FACTS are stubborn things: therefore they are not at all times the most pleasant things to write or the pleasantest things to read, particularly when they oppose any long cherished ideas; nevertheless, they are good things, particularly when they lead to good; and the few facts set forth in this little book will, in the writer's opinion, lead to the greatest good that this world ever experienced, if they are received with the same spirit in which they are written, viz., so far as the writer can judge of his own matter, with the earnest desire for the extension of the Lord's kingdom on the earth, by setting before the reader in a very simple way some of the facts respecting the divine revelation to man, and the declension of the world from a state of goodness and truth to a state of gross darkness, and its final restoration, "by the redeeming mercy of the Lord," to a state of glory which the most fertile imagination cannot conceive, to a state when the "kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ," and He shall reign in the hearts of all the inhabitants of the world: for the time will come when they shall not have occasion to say, "Know the Lord, for all shall know Him from the least even to the greatest, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas."
