WELCOME "METHODIST MESSENGER"! I like your name and appearance. To whom are you sent? and what are your messages? If you are a true Methodist, your mission, I know, will be to all who need visitation, and your errand will be that of benevolence and truth.

I am, what I profess to be, a genuine Methodist; and, therefore, without bigotry "the friend of all and the enemy of none." My mission, you rightly judge, is to all; not so much to make Methodists as, by the blessing of God, to make Christians; not so much to promote the interests of any one denomination as to win souls for Christ; and to lead those who love Him to love Him more perfectly.

With regard to my messages, I hope to come laden with them every month. They will be miscellaneous, but none of them will be trifling, and all of them will be important. Longer than telegrams are, generally, they will furnish explanations and reasons for what is made known beyond what are received by electric wires; and yet they will be so brief that the busiest in this busy age may read them and profit by them. They will be expressed in a free, outspoken style, and yet without vulgarity or coarseness. You may expect from me, from time to time, messages relating to the attainment of Experimental and Practical Godliness; to the holiest examples set forth in Christian Biography; and to the Scriptural necessity and design of Church Agencies. In connection with the latter, I shall have something to say on the duties and services of Class-Leaders, Local Preachers, School Teachers, Mothers' Meetings, and on all kinds of Mission-work, Home and Foreign. My communications will also take the form of Family Readings, so that each member of the household may have his or her portion, including servants and children. VOL. I. JANUary, 1871.

Young persons, I know, like to receive messages, and they shall not be forgotten. As I shall bring instruction for Churchmembers, as well as for those who shall teach others, I shall be the bearer of Pastoral Counsels from ministers, and not forgetting the need of the present times-promptings to Protestant Duties. Christian Poets will be likely to engage my services; but I promise that if, in any instances, their effusions be unscriptural in sentiment, unpoetical in conception, or mere doggerel in versification, I shall refuse to be a Messenger for them. As my visits will be monthly, I intend to keep a Monthly Record of events relating to the Church in the world, so that its progress may be known and registered.

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Thanks, kind reader, for the welcome you have given me. Be assured my only object is to promote your highest welfare. messengers are abroad, working incalculable injury to mankind. Some of them are employed by Mammon, and others by Belial; some are on the exciting errands of sporting and gaming; and by encouraging betting amongst young and old, accomplish the ruin of thousands. Others pander to licentiousness; and others, by dwelling constantly and apologetically on the career of criminals, surround with fatal fascination a life of crime. messengers of error, too, are destructively busy; and in the interests of infidelity on the one hand, and of superstition on the other, are compassing sea and land to make proselytes. To help, by the Divine blessing, to counteract these numerous and powerful agencies of evil, and to lead forth old and young in the way of truth and goodness, "The Methodist Messenger" has appeared. When you have read my several messages, please pass me on to your neighbour's house, that I may communicate instruction to as many as possible.