ELPIS ISRAEL.

By the time this number of the Herald is in the hands of the reader, Elpis Israel will be passing through the press of a printing establishment in New York. We shall publish 1000 copies, and trust that those who profess to be interested in the Gospel of the Kingdom, who have not yet done according to their ability, will bestir themselves in obtaining circulation for them among the people. The American edition will be an improvement upon the London. The paper will be better; the plates will be worked off by steam; there will be a steel plate engraving of the author; and an additional preface containing our correspondence with the Russian ambassador in London, and our letter addressed to the Emperor with the copy of Elpis Israel forwarded to Baron Brunow for transmission to St. Petersburg. Though not sanguine of widely-extended and numerous combinations in the interests of the faith in these latter days of an expiring era, we are hopeful of deep and lasting impressions upon many minds through Elpis Israel, which shall strengthen to the promotion of the common cause against the enemy, and lead them in the way of righteousness that they may enter life in the kingdom of God. The circulation of a few thousand copies among the intelligent of the people, we doubt not, would produce a notable result in favor of the truth. It would create more real believers in the gospel of God than have been formed by all the preaching for the last thirty years. Here then is a work for them to do who profess to believe “the things of the Kingdom of God, and the Name of the Lord Jesus.” We have done our part. We have written the book, and published it at considerable risk in a foreign land, and are incurring further hazard in this; the least they can do who say they love the truth is to exert themselves in its favor. If they cannot leave their farms, or their merchandise, or their professions, as we do, to speak to the people all the words of this life, they are now left without an excuse in not circulating these words, seeing that the means are placed within their reach, and that they have nothing else to do but to put their hands into their pockets, where they have got secreted a good deal of the Lord’s treasure, and apply some of the “mammon of unrighteousness” to the purchase of Elpis Israel for gratuitous distribution to those who are inquiring what they must believe and do to inherit eternal life. It is true they have the scriptures; but they cannot understand them, and their preachers darken council by words without knowledge. Elpis Israel will enable men to understand the scriptures, and then the scriptures will make them wise to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. The disciples going to Emmaus, and the Apostles, had the scriptures, but it was necessary for their understandings to be opened before they could see into their meaning. —Luke 24: 45. The key of knowledge had been stolen from them by the scribes and lawyers, and Jesus restored it to them. They could then unlock the hidden mysteries of the word. So it is now. The people read, but they know not about what they read. The key restored by the Lord and published by his servants has been again lost, so that now when men read the Bible they know not whether they are reading of things in the Milky Way, or in “an intermediate state;” of things past or of things to come; or of things real or allegorical. The lost key is found in Elpis Israel; and though the faithlessness or incredulity and indifference of mankind keep them from enjoying the benefit of the discovery, to persons of “honest and good hearts” the discovery is a restoration, which has caused the hearts of such to burn within them while it opens to them the scriptures by the way. This is the desideratum of the age—a key to the understanding of the Bible. The thing desired is supplied in Elpis Israel. Will its friends do themselves the honor of “compelling” it into an extensive circulation, as the apostles compelled their contemporaries, by being instant in season and out of season, to come into the Lord’s House that it might be filled? Behold what the blind accomplish for the diffusion of their darkness to the utmost bounds of the habitable earth! Seventy-five millions of dollars have been subscribed for sectarian missionary purposes in England since the societies commenced. Even a few days ago in this city a young lady subscribed a hundred dollars, and an old man five thousand to send sectarianism to “heathen lands!” Such is the emulative liberality of the blind! Worthy indeed of a better cause. But from our experience of the effects of knowledge upon some, we apprehend, were they as enlightened as these, it would freeze up the sources of their bounty and congeal it into the solidity of selfish avarice. We remember hearing of an enlightened “reformer” in the west urging upon his friend the reception of Campbellism on account of its cheapness, saying that he had been a reformer twenty years, and in all that time his religion had only cost him twenty-five cents! What a miserable, parsimonious, creature was this! Talk of “souls,” surely such a soul as his was never a particle of the Divine Essence! But we are sorry to bear witness that there are souls who profess the gospel of the grace of God as covetous as his; and that it is such enlightened icicles as these that in appearance justify the saying, that “ignorance is the mother of devotion.” We would have liberality in the promotion of God’s truth spring from a self-denying appreciation of it. We feel that we have a right to speak plainly on this subject, for we have proved our faith by our works; and would stir up our friends to do more than we if they can. We have forsaken all for the promotion of the truth. Will our friends go and do likewise; or will they in proportion to their ability begin to do something that will shield them from shame and contempt when they shall appear before the tribunal of Christ. Let them not mistake. We ask them for no bounty for our own individual profit. We are not of that class who say, as certain preachers in town and country, “we will not preach for you unless you give us six hundred, or a thousand dollars a year.” Our advocacy of the truth does not depend upon any per annum. We are bound to advocate it as long as we can. Our anxiety is that the advocacy should be efficient; and as we cannot do all that needs to be done, and have friends who are abundantly able to do much, we desire to stir them up to a cooperation that shall not consist in mere words, but in deed and in truth. Here is Elpis Israel to their hand. If it remains inefficient it will be because of their lack of enterprise and liberality. Let them therefore see to it, for the Lord’s eye is upon all their ways, and all their thoughts and motives are known to him.

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