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TO THIS EDITION

I praise cheap books and insist on the need for them, people turn round upon me and say, ' Physician, heal thyself! nobody's books are dearer than your own.' Whether his books shall be cheap or not, does not depend wholly upon the author; and I might urge, besides, that in foretelling a success for cheap books, I was thinking of books by authors more popular than I am. A volume of my verse, however, at a comparatively cheap price, has been in circulation for some time, and I have long had the wish to try the experiment of bringing out one of my prose books at a price yet cheaper. That wish I fulfil by the publication of the present volume. The book chosen has been more in demand than any other of my prose writings, and it lent itself to my purpose, further, by admitting of considerable condensation. The argument of the work is more readily followed, and for the general reader it probably gains in force, by the suppression of a good deal of the apparatus of citation and illustration from Scripture which originally