MIA OL LEXVE

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1936, by

SWORDS, STANFORD, & CO.

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New Yorg

4547

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

THE present Volume contains two works, which have been separately published in England; the Family Commentary upon the Sefmen on the Mount having appeared there, about a year after the first edition of the Family Prayers. The arrangement now adopted will, it is thought, be found convenient for domestic worship; as combining within the same volume a Manual of prayer, and portions of scriptural exposition for reading.

It may seem presumptuous in the Editor to say any thing by way of introduction, to productions bearing on their title-page the name of THORNTON ;-a name, fa miliar not to England only, but to the world; and indis solubly associated with our thoughts of whatever is enlarged in Christian beneficence, sound in religious views, and beautiful in consistency of daily practice. He will take the liberty, however, of simply saying, in regard to the Family Prayers, that, without at all detracting from the merit of other works of the same description, they appear to him to preserve, in a remarkable degree, the difficult and happy medium between verboseness on the one hand, and a cold concise