Excerpt from Forty Years' Familiar Letters of James W. Alexander, D. D, Vol. 1 of 2: Constituting, With the Notes, a Memoir of His Life The highest advantages Of the method adopted would have been sacrificed had the editor, for the sake Of produc ing an appearance Of uniformity in his friend's Opinions and positions, suppressed the evidence Of such fluctuations as every independent and investigating mind is open to. With this View I have suffered to stand some diversities Of his judgment, at different times, or in different lights, on points Of theology, church order, church policy, slavery, and other topics. His views on some important questions may have been modified, without any trace Of the change appearing in the letters; and I have been particularly re quested to notice, under this head, that in the last years Of his life, he saw the importance of a far stricter rule in Observing the Lord's day, and in the allowance Of fash ion able amusements, than would appear from some occa sioual statements in these volumes. And I am sure that I should not have been excused had I at all subdued the light and playful tone in which many Of the letters are written, or attempted any amend ment Of the abrupt transitions and Off-hand phrases so characteristic Of the unstudied, unrevised expression Of the uppermost thoughts at the moment Of writing. TO have changed his manner would have been as great nu faithfulness to the full delineation Of my correspondent, as to have concealed his sentiments. It may reasonably be expected, also, that there will be accorded to these letters the indulgence almost as claimable for a correspondence Of this kind, as for ordinary conversa tion, Of strong, and even exaggerated, language; when every thing in the connexion and style shows that these allowances are due. It would be the highest injustice to throw the private writings Of another before the world, if such a consideration as this could not be depended on. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.