The Millennial Harbinger Abridged, Volume 2

In 1902, The Standard Publishing Company produced a two-volume abridgement of what may be considered Alexander Campbell's magnum opus, The Millennial HarbingerThe Millennial Harbinger, which he edited from its inception in 1830 through the end of 1864, a little over a year before his death on March 4, 1866.

This is the second volume of that publication, and is considerably larger than the first due to the fact that it contains not only an index to both volumes of the abridged edition, but an index to all forty volumes of the HarbingerHarbinger as well.

"The work of selecting, abridging and editing was done," says the editor, Benjamin Lyon Smith, "as a special work from 1888 to 1894," during which time Smith served as minister of the First Christian Church of Topeka, Kansas, and as corresponding secretary of the Kansas State Board of Missions.

In his preface to the first volume, Smith writes: "The Millennial Harbinger Abridged is an attempt to rescue from oblivion much that is of permanent value; to arrange it topically and chronologically; to eliminate matters of mere local and temporary character, and, by carefully indexing, to render it accessible and available."

He goes on to note that "The Harbinger was not a symmetrical publication; it was a magazine, not a book; many subjects that we might wish had been fully discussed are not mentioned; many are partially treated, and many are repeatedly discussed, as they seemed of recurring interest; hence the Millennial Harbinger Abridged will not be found either symmetrical, systematic or exhaustive."

In his preface to volume 2, Smith writes: "We do not want any one to think that this abridgment is an exhaustive treatment of the mine of truth contained in the Millennial Harbingers. There remains yet very much gold to him who will seek it."

We are pleased to be able to make this volume available in e-book format with table of contents entries linked to the text and with footnotes linked to their reference numbers. For additional volumes from this publisher, go to "The Stone-Campbell e-Print Library" at stone-campbell.org.