The Christian Review: Volume 1

Many hours of work have gone into the production of the volume you now hold in your hands. Many people have been a part of this project, and each one did it as a labor of love in order to bring this often forgotten part of Restoration Movement history to light once more. All students of the movement are at least aware of Campbell's two periodicals, The Christian Baptist and The Millennial Harbinger. Some have heard of Walter Scott's The Evangelist and Barton Stone's Christian Messenger. Most know about The Gospel Advocate, but may not be aware of its pedigree and history. But ask most members of the church of Christ, the Christian Church, or the Disciples of Christ (those who trace their history back to the Restoration Movement, though some distance themselves from the principles their spiritual forefathers fought for) about Tolbert Fanning's Christian Review, and you'll most likely end up with blank stares.

Tolbert Fanning (who would later go on to found and edit the Gospel Advocate) was a staunch conservative voice, standing for Jesus Christ and His church against any attacks. Along with him, this volume contains articles from such men as H.T. Anderson (whose New Testament translation was quite popular in the late 1800s), Thomas Campbell, Jesse B. Ferguson (who sadly would later lose his grip on the truth and left the faith), and others.

As much as is possible, we have tried to keep the original setup from the 1844 edition of the Christian Review. This has been done so that any writers who have, or who will in the future, quote from or reference it will not have readers scratching their heads if they look for the quote in this volume or in the original.

The text has been cleaned up visually, but no changes have been made to the text itself, except for a few very rare cases where there was an obvious typo (like "teh" instead of "the").

We hope you enjoy this piece of Restoration Movement history.

-The Publisher