Content preview - You need a premium account to view this content.

Preface.

MANY deaths have occurred within the last few years among the veteran members of our Church. Numbers of persons have recently passed away who were connected with the Church during the early years of its existence, and whose lives were filled with scenes and incidents of the most interesting nature. Their wonderful experience so far as known is appreciated by their intimate friends, in whose memories it is embalmed, but it will hereafter only be known as tradition, for, as a rule, they have left no written testimony or record of their lives to show to future generations what they have seen or passed through. We have scarcely ever heard of the death of such a person without a feeling of regret that the important scenes of which he was a witness while living were not better known, and that a definite and accurate account of them had not been written before his death.

A short time since we conceived the idea of publishing a volume of the "Faith-Promoting Series," entitled EARLY SCENES IN CHURCH HISTORY, to be made up of such incidents of appropriate nature as we could obtain from early members of the Church.

Of course we were aware that a single volume of the size contemplated could not describe a tithe of the interesting scenes of a faith-promoting nature with which the early history of the Church abounded, but not until we had started the compilation did we realize to the full extent the vastness of the field which we had entered upon. We gathered the incidents contained in the present volume at random (mostly from verbal narratives), compiled them very hastily, with too little regard perhaps for variety, and feel that we have hardly made a commencement at recounting the early scenes of which a record should be perpetuated.