For more than sixty years after its first publication in 1765, The Christian Journal, John Brown of Haddington’s first published work for the public, remained immensely popular—leading to the production of numerous editions. Robert Mackenzie, in his biography of Brown, said, “as edition after edition was called for, the author was altering, adding to, amending, and sometimes not improving his pithy, pungent expressions.”—Indeed, even after his death in 1787, revisions and new editions of Brown’s Christian Journal continued to roll off the printing press for decades.

While no two editions were perfectly alike, The Christian Journal never lost its savour, or its ability to train the heart and mind to see with eyes of faith: to discern spiritual truths from the mundane. Now, more than two hundred years later, Brown’s Christian Journal is available again, in yet another new edition—true to the original, with helps for the modern reader, in hopes of instructing another generation of hearts and minds to see things unseen.