IN concluding our First Volume, we have only to express a hope that we have not departed from the principles put forth in our Prospectus. In advocating the characteristic doctrines of the English Church, as embodied in her Book of Common Prayer, our endeavour has been to preserve a cheerful, reve- rential, uncontroversial tone; and while we have devoted ourselves largely to the consideration of such practical points as concern the Parish Priest in the discharge of his pastoral duties, our wish has been at the same time to provide food for the imagination, and to direct the taste aright in those departments of art, which are, or may be, employed in the service of the Sanctuary.
In future Numbers, adhering to the same fundamental prin- ciples, we hope to show even still more varied Tables of Contents, and to bring every branch of Literature, from time to time, under Review. In so doing the Ecclesiastic, we hold, is fulfilling an indirect, it may be, but an important part of his Office. He must bring forth out of his stores "things new and old"; and how shall he be able to do so unless his studies in some measure keep pace with the progress of the age in which he lives? It is his business in all matters which are "of good report" to
mould men's minds to the apprehending of right ideas. While living above the world, he must strive to direct it.
Some Articles have been already given upon the usages of Foreign Churches. Others of a similar kind, it is hoped, will speedily follow. From no one cause does the English Church suffer more than from her isolation, and want of sympathy with the other members of the One Body.
In conclusion, the Editor has only to thank those Gentlemen who have contributed to the pages of the "Ecclesiastic," or have exerted themselves to bring it into notice-a thing by no means so easily accomplished as some may suppose; and on his own part and on that of the Proprietor, to express their anxious desire to render the Magazine an organ not unworthy of the sacred cause which it professes to advocate.
In compliance with the suggestion of several friends, the Maga- zine will henceforward be printed in a larger type.
Feast of S. Barnabas, 1846,
Education, State of, in the Counties of Bedford, Cambridge, and Hunt-
Union of the Sees of S. Asaph and Bangor.-Letter from the Earl of
Powis to the Dean of S. Asaph
Upsal, the Archbishop of, and the present State of Christendom
Bede's (Venerable) Five Books of Ecclesiastical History, edited by Pro-
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