THE

PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE.

JANUARY, 1851.

Miscellaneous Articles.

THE PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN

CHURCH.

THE Press is an agency of power in promoting the edification and general prosperity of the Church. The two points relating to our periodical literature on which we propose to offer a few remarks, are its true characteristics and its adequate supply.

Intellectual ability is a chief element of all profitable reading. Intelligence must regulate the activity of the press-intelligence in the double sense of a discriminating adherence to doctrinal truth, and of ability in the general management of the miscellaneous topics within the proper range of inquiry. The Presbyterian Church possesses an intellectual character probably beyond the ordinary average of attainment; and its standards and sanctuary ministrations encourage sound thinking and create a demand for the best productions of the mind. No literature can meet the just expectations of our people that is not pervaded by intelligent apprehensions of theological truth, and able discussions in all the departments of knowledge.

Spirituality, or practical religious influence, ought also to be a definite aim. Christian publications must harmonize with the spirit of the Bible. Life is too short, its interests too momentous, to lose sight of truth in its relations to practice. Whilst the requisite variety of biography, history, anecdote, intelligence, and miscellaneous reading should be interwoven into the substantial material of literature, each component part should be designed for actual and profitable use. In the midst of abounding licentiousness, the religious bearings of truth must receive scriptural prominence. The work of personal sanctification is one of the glorious objects to be promoted by the issues of a Christian press.

Our periodical literature should be guided by the principles of VOL. I.-No. 1.

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good taste. The God of nature and of revelation displays in all His works the beauties and harmonies essential to their perfection. Religion needs the aid of the most gifted resources of literature and learning. The Church, through its ministers, its writings, and its instrumentalities of every description, must conciliate the influences and use the advantages which true taste, cultivated moral perception and enlightened sensibility can supply in the inculcation of truth. The world must not be allowed the claim of superiority in anything that pertains to the true character of the most finished and influential literature.

The periodical press of the Presbyterian Church should be eminently conservative. The doctrines of grace, which in our standards ascribe so great glory to God as sovereign on his throne, are suited to train the mind to a thoughtful and steadfast sobriety, as well as to true self-reliance and energy. Fanaticism finds the landmarks of Calvinism too high for its fantastic tricks of thought, feeling, and action. The conservative character of our truth and polity create a demand for a literature whose influence on all moral, social, and political questions shall be sound, conservative, and discriminating.

The periodical literature of our Church should be aggressive. It should take an interest in everything that concerns the advancement of the cause of Christ in the world. It should arouse the activities of the Church by the presentation of motive, the discussion of plans and principles, the communication of intelligence, the enforcement of obligation. Our day is a day of work. Spirituality must be moulded into the form of action. The banners of Zion must float upon her walls, and readiness of defence be combined with alacrity to serve in the field, and to carry the victories of redemption to every land. Indeed one of the chief ends of the periodical press is to occupy the post of observation, watch the movements of Providence, light the sentinel fires of warning, and encourage whatever is demanded for intelligent enterprise, hardy perseverance, and enlarged conquest. Our conservatism will be of a proper quality only when in union with a living spirit of aggressive

achievement.

One other element of our literature should be its Catholic spirit. Attachment to our own views of doctrine, government and policy should be regulated by the principles of Christian charity and the high sanctions of the word of God. A literature, imbued with low, sectarian aims, may do an amount of evil which more than counterbalances any influences for good. It is not intended to convey the idea that questions of ecclesiastical difference are not properly subjects of discussion. By no means. The exposure of error is a duty that cannot be compromised. Two things, however, are included in the demands of Christian charity-one is, that such discussions should not have a prominence disproportionate to their value and the higher claims of more serious and important truths; and the other is, that their temper should be one of moderation and only

severe when the occasion imperatively requires it. We believe that the literature of the Presbyterian Church is at least as little tainted by bigotry and sectarianism as that of any other branch of the Church of Christ. May this characteristic be still more manifestly and widely exemplified; and in connexion with the others that have been presented to view, may the periodical literature of our Church be fitly sustained, by the help and blessing of God, in the pages of THE PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE. Every enterprise like the present needs the illuminating and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit to guide it into all truth and animate it with the life of spiritual religion.

A few words are offered in reference to the duty of furnishing an adequate supply of periodical reading for our Church.

In employing the press in the service of religion we should watch for occasions of offering the fruits of Christian study in such forms as will meet real want. Patronage for religious publications should not be solicited as such, irrespective of their fitness to the state of the people; nor the circulation of religious books be urged merely to crowd the market with Christian literature. But when, as now, a clear opening is discerned for a periodical, adapted to awaken and guide religious thought for a large body of our people, the providential opportunity ought not to be disregarded. We would rather. be sanguine than distrustful; and when we witness the amazing increase of general patronage for the press in our country, and consider the facility and swift succession with which literary periodicals of great expense win large favour and patronage, we cannot reasonably despair of prosperity in our own undertaking. We enter an unoccupied field. No rivalship is threatened to any existing publication. In the Presbyterian circle, the wide chasm between the learned, profound and elaborate Quarterly, and the lively and ephemeral Weekly is entirely empty, except as it is traversed by the missionary publications of the Boards of the Church. We have an open field-too large, we fear, for our strength. But remembering whence our help cometh, we venture forward, and offer our humble services to those friends of religion who may find it agreeable to accept them.

There is a valuable service due from the periodical press to the cause of religion in presenting solid and practical views of religious truth in a permanent form. Extempore discussions in a weekly column, though good, are not enough. There is no truth nor duty, no promise nor experience of religion which is not worthy of a place in some elaborate exhibition, and of treatment so much at large and in such a style, as would give permanent interest and value to the page which presents it. Beyond all doubt, a large amount of the matter of our religious weeklies is worthy of a permanent and accessible form; but the leading objects of the newspaper and the weekly issue outweigh with the public the benefits of permanency and the convenience of repeated reading. Hence the weekly is for a single perusal, is filed inconveniently from its shape, and there fore

seldom preserved. The religious quarterly has a sphere different from that of the weekly, though limited with equal decision; confining itself to learned and intricate questions of criticism and dogmatics, and those departments of history and philosophy which pre-suppose rigid, mental discipline, and large erudition in the reader. It rises over the heads of the numerous and influential portion of the religious public, who really give the Church her character and maintain her efficiency. Now, between these two extremes of the weekly and the quarterly, has the periodical press nothing to do for the Church? And yet in our branch of the Church what is it doing? See the literary intermediates, of all descriptions of monthly magazines, rushing, like air towards a vacuum, to supply the immense interval between the desultory newspaper and the scientific quarterly; effectually touching, between these two extremes, the whole surface of our reading mind, and occupying our mental activity with a literature without religion if not against it. And has the Church in this vast field, no place for her permanent forms of thought, her motions of religious sensibility, her implements of intellectual and moral culture? Shall every theme but religion periodically win acceptance through the eye, and captivate thought in convenient and accessible forms? The religious volume in sumptuous apparel is no rarity among us. It takes its place and serves its ends as a literary fixture in the circle of learning. It is a pool, not a stream. history of all literature admonishes our Church that the religious periodical which shall be, at the same time portable and permanent, with its perennial issue from the Living Fountain, fresh and lively as the water brook, is charged by the manifest design of God, with a service for religion which no other agency can perform. To do our part of this sacred service is what we are about to undertake.

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We close with a word to our brethren of the Christian ministry. We do not arrogate the office of teacher to the ministry; while, like the preacher before an assembly of preachers, we find ourselves taking a position from which a word to the ministry will seem in course. But the sole relation we assume to the preachers of the gospel is that of a helper. We expect far less to instruct the pulpit than to co-operate with it. We ask of the brethren the privilege of labouring, in our way, together with them; of presenting the beauties of heavenly truth through the eye to those immortal minds, to whom they are presenting the harmonies of truth through the ear; of conversing monthly by the fireside with those whom they invite to a weekly audience in the sanctuary, and of sowing, through the periodical press, our handful of the precious seed, to be mingled in the soil with the bountiful disseminations of the pulpit. Lend us your co-operation, brethren, so far as our help can forward your own good work. Give us in the vineyard by your side as large a place as you think we can occupy to your advantage, with the instrument which the Lord has put into our hands; and we will cherish the hope

that when we shall have borne with you the burden and heat of the day, we shall witness and enjoy together the fruit of our toil in the salvation of many for whom we have laboured, and in the gracious approbation of our Lord.

THE LANDMARKS OF TIME.

THE Christian pilgrim, on his journey to a better world, sees many memorials of change in nature and providence. Let us glance at some of the landmarks of time.

Time is pointed out to us by DAYS, AND MONTHS, AND SEASONS, AND YEARS. "The evening and the morning were the first day;" for the "greater light" is a measure of time, in addition to its other offices. An individual, only thirty years of age, has beheld an alternation of light and darkness more than ten thousand times. Such an one must have many impressions of an onward movement-of a progressive world. Twelve times during the last year has the moon, in "the lesser light" of her constant variations, written the same lesson on the heart of man. Four distinctly marked seasons have reiterated the solemn truth with every combination of colour, and fragrance, and blossom, and cloud. And the year comes along, a gleaner in the broad fields of life, to gather up the fragments of lost impressions, and to remind us still more emphatically that "this too shall pass away." "Happy New Year" is a courteous and expressive congratulation. Happy will it be to those who, surveying the landmarks of time, press onward to the joys of the eternal world!

Another memorial of time is found in the PHYSICAL CHANGES OF THE HUMAN FRAME. A child is born! How fearfully and wonderfully is the little stranger wrought! Not the least of his wonders is, that the frame-with all its bones and muscles, and bloodvessels, and exquisite contrivances of life-grows. The child in the cradle has become a youth and then a man, and the girls are active matrons; but after a brief series of years, the decrepitude of age weighs them all down into dust. The mutations of the human form almost give rise to the idea of the occupation by the soul of different bodies, as if in transmigration. Sure we are, that every thoughtful mind sees in the processes and progresses of the human form, evidence of strange revolution. Disease, too, comes in, and like the pioneer who blazes his road through the dark forest, leaves its notches of decay for the ready eye of approaching death. Reader, behold in your body the landmarks of time.

The VARIATIONS OF OUTWARD CONDITION are solemn monitors of earthly change. Great are the varieties of state undergone in a world where all is fleeting. Few die in the house that gave them birth. The graves of families are rarely undivided. And then how different the lot in life of members of the same family! Each one,