PREFATORY REMARKS

Some of the chapters of this book were originally written for a little monthly which was devoted to the advocacy of Christian holiness, and which had quite a limited circulation and a very short life. By securing a file of this extinct publication, the author has been enabled to collect what he had written for it, and by revising some of the articles, and writing others that were needed in as fully discussing the subject as he wished, he has been supplied with means to send forth, for the Master's use, a regular, though compendious and unpretending, treatise on the subject of entire sanctification. This would not have been done, however, had he continued able for his work in spreading holiness in the churches, but unable for active service at present, the next best thing he could do on this line was to prepare and publish this book.

He has made an effort to present his thoughts upon this greatest of all themes, in an easy, flowing style of writing, and to have them printed in large, plain type, so that common readers, aged people, and seekers of the grace of perfect love, will read the book with ease and pleasure. All technical language and critical exegesis have been studiously avoided; and while he has attempted to logically defend positions which he deemed important to support, he has shunned all scholasticism that might please the few but tire the many.

The author does not claim to have made any new discoveries in this department of religious knowledge, or to have found a more happy method of presenting the theme than writers who have preceded him, yet he has been led into a discussion of certain interesting and important phases of the subject, which he has not noticed in other treatises, and which he believes will instruct and edify those for whom the book has been especially prepared.

The reader may decide it in poor taste that he is addressed so frequently and personally through the course of the book, but his spiritual profit, rather than literary elegance and finish, has been the aim of the writer, and is his apology for this and some other matters that may justly provoke criticism.

The matter of the book is introduced by the author's experience in regeneration and entire sanctification, and he feels a good degree of hope that the Spirit of grace will use, in some small measure, both the experience and the discussion in "spreading scriptural holiness over these lands."

Coshocton, O. S. B.

 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

It is with profound gratitude the author learns that there is so soon a call for the second edition of his little book. A few verbal alterations, and the insertion of a truer and better finished portrait, are all the changes that will be found in this second issue.

It was with some recoil of the author's feelings that his portrait was made a frontispiece; but the wish of many friends, the extensive acquaintance made in evangelistic travels, the aid it would give to the circulation of the book, and the fact that his active ministry is now ended by infirmity and age, reconciled him to its insertion and made that seem eminently proper which, under other circumstances, might appear inexcusable vanity.

Coshocton, O. S. B.