THE WESLEYAN-METHODIST MAGAZINE, FOR 1846: BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE ARMINIAN OR METHODIST MAGAZINE; FIRST PUBLISHED BY THE REV. JOHN WESLEY, A. M. FOURTH SERIES. VOL. II.-PART I. VOLUME LXIX. FROM THE COMMENCEMENT. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY JOHN MASON, WESLEYAN CONFERENCE OFFICE, 14, CITY-ROAD; PREFACE. THE preparation of the materials for the December Number of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine reminds us of the approach of the completion of another annual portion of our task, as well as that it again becomes our duty to present to our readers, according to long-established custom, those observations which, in the form of preface, may be prefixed to the volume for Eighteen Hundred and Forty-Six. For a large share of the contents of the volume, we are indebted, as in former years, to esteemed Correspondents, to whom it is our pleasing duty again to tender our grateful acknowledgments, and whose continued favours we respectfully solicit. To these solicitations, we trust, they will be the more disposed to attend, when they remember the extensive and lasting character of the usefulness, the opportunity for which is thus afforded them. The ramifications of that section of the professing church of the Lord Jesus, which is formed by the united societies of the Wesleyan Methodists, are now found in almost every part of the world; and wherever the Wesleyans are, there also is the Wesleyan Magazine, not only a book for individual perusal, but one which is laid regularly on the family table, among the principal organs of domestic information and instruction. This extensive circulation, we trust, we may even say that we are persuaded,-contributes its share, subordinately to other and higher instrumentality, towards the preservation of that happy oneness and uniformity by which Methodism is so remarkably characterized, and at which so many observers are astonished. Wherever a Methodist finds Methodism, he finds the Methodism to which he has been previously accustomed. He may go, in the order of Providence, where all the individual members are strangers to him, but the system and its connected usages are the same; and multitudes have rejoiced, when their "lot has been cast in a far country," to feel themselves at once perfectly at home,—and at home where strangeness would have been most distressing. One reason of this we have already suggested; and as the subject relates materially to one of the objects which, more especially, we have recently felt it our duty to keep particularly in view, we will again advert to it. We refer to the church character of the Wesleyan Societies; and we feel the less difficulty in speaking of this, because it is so entirely dissociated from all approaches to exclusiveness. If they claim to be a church, they never dream of considering themselves to be the church. That vital godliness is not confined to themselves, they most readily and thankfully acknowledge; and as readily do they acknowledge the ecclesiastical organization of others. From their inmost soul would they shun the true schism of refusing recognition and fraternal intercourse in cases where Christ, the common Saviour and Lord, has evidently received individuals, and given his prospering blessing to collective instrumentality. And in nothing are they more ready to acknowledge |