THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE. NEW SERIES.-VOL. II. EDINBURGH: WILLIAM OLIPHANT AND CO. MDCCCLVIII. PREFACE. THE plans and objects of this Magazine are now so well understood by the class of readers for whom mainly it is designed, that we find little need to take advantage of the opportunity afforded us, at the close of another year's labours, to offer a few sentences about ourselves. Perhaps, however, this is the best place to put on record, as we most sincerely do, our gratitude for all the kind forbearance and active support, which ministers and office-bearers, as well as other friends, throughout the United Church, have extended to us in relation to the Volume herewith completed. We are all the more deeply sensible of these favours, that we know they do not proceed from any mere sectional or party interest-for, in the denomination which we serve, section or party there is none,—and that every imaginable line of demarcation between the brethren or individual churches is lost sight of, in the harmonious and impartial confederacy on whom the Magazine depends. In a Christian Body so numerous as ours, and representing, as we persuade ourselves it does, so large a proportion of those independent thinkers in our land, who wish to "prove all things," as well as to "hold fast that which is good," it is to be presumed that there are some who have, occasionally, to dissent from views expressed in the Journal which bears their denominational name. That there are such dissentients, our own pages, under the heading "Correspondence," prove from time to time; and for the sake of the church as well as of the Magazine, we hope the day is far distant when the honest and conscientious demurrers of Christian men shall cease to be not only entered and received, but read and pondered, in their denominational journal. At the same time, we have to state, with grateful satisfaction, that, when such differences of opinion have been expressed by our correspondents, it has been in a kindly Christian |