Preface to the Second Edition

The changes introduced into this new edition are few and slight. But I am glad to have this opportunity oi pointing out more distinctly than is done in the text that the names given to the different years of our Lord’s public ministry are descriptive only of their most prominent characteristics, and especially that in what I have called the Year of Public Favour, although the disposition of the general mind towards Him was such as fully to justify the designation, He was already assailed by the authorities with much of the kind of opposition which is described in the fifth chapter.

The kind reception accorded to the first edition of this little Handbook seems to show that, notwithstanding the number of works on the same subject which have recently issued from the press, there was need of a book which, by exhibiting in the briefest possible space the main features and the general course of our Lord’s life, should cause the well-known details to flow together in the reader’s mind and shape themselves into an easily comprehended whole.

Kirkcaldy, March i, 1880.