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ROBERT JACKSON, 5, ST. ENOCH SQUARE.

MDCCCLIV.

TO OUR READERS.

A

AGAIN, in the good providence of God, we have arrived at one of the great stand-points in our course, when inclination and duty dispose us to take another look of the past, before setting our faces to the future. We present our readers with our last monthly contribution for the year 1854. During the lapsing year we have endeavoured, not only to maintain the principles for which our Periodical has been distinguished, from its commencement in 1832, but to meet, to the utmost of our ability and space, the moral and intellectual claims of our numerous friends. It is no easy matter, when a family is a numerous one, to provide for each member the entertainment to which his peculiar taste may incline him; and much more so, when the taste is an intellectual one, and when there is some little hazard of exciting his dissatisfaction, if our viands are not, according to his judgment, suitable and seasonable. variety of circumstances, however-to the pleasing influence of which we are not insensible-lead us to believe that, during this year, we have been welcomed with a large measure of acceptance; and though we feel as if we had now fully established ourselves in the confidence of all our readers, we assure them that our anxieties and energies shall continue unabated, to secure to our monthly intercourse a permanency mutually pleasing and profitable. We cordially thank them for their continued good wishes, and now, looking in the direction of the future, apprise them of something of the mode in which our Monthly is to be got up, not merely to sustain, but to extend its popularity. The spirit of our Journal has, from the very first, and throughout its entire history, been that of catholicity. We have never even thought of sectarianism but with loathing, and, had we the power, would banish it from the terminology of our language, and by an irrevocable edict declare that it should never be reponed. On matters which we deem non-essential, we may at times have spoken very freely and frankly; but we can and will forbear with those who exalt minor matters above the level which we think they should occupy. On all vital points, however, either in doctrine or church organization, we have striven to stand true to our Lord and Head, persuaded that so long as men are "first pure," and resolve to remain such, they have good security for being "peaceable," and not otherwise. On the broad platform of catholicity "who love we mean to remain, and shall never grudge room on it to any the Lord Jesus Christ," and are found "walking in the truth."

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