A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR by Larry E. Wilson

Octavius Winslow (1808–1878) served as a pastor both in the United States and in England. His morning devotionals, now over 150 years old, are wonderful.

I fear that their quaint form, however, causes them to be ignored by many who could profit from them. Accordingly, I have sought to make them more accessible to such modern readers. I have updated some of his vocabulary, changed some of his punctuation, broken his longer sentences into shorter ones, and broken his longer paragraphs into shorter ones.

For the most part, I have also replaced Scripture quotations from the King James Version with quotations from the English Standard Version.

Pastor Winslow also quoted many Scriptures without identifying the reference, so I have sought to identify those references to help readers to locate them. I have attempted to be faithful to his text, although in a very few cases I have slightly modified the content if I deemed it to be more helpful to do so.

I have also appended hymn texts that I judged to voice an appropriate response to each devotional. I began this project as a discipline simply for my own edification; if that ends up as its sole use, then this has been a fruitful endeavor. But eventually it occurred to me that others may also find this material helpful. And so, to put it into the words of Pastor Winslow, "Should it, with the Holy Spirit's blessing, occasionally drop a Christ-endearing, heart-soothing, soul-guiding word in seasons of daily toil, conflict, or trial, his utmost wish in its publication will be realized."

Larry E. Wilson, 2010