THE former Editor of the OBSERVATORY having felt himself called, in the providence of God, to return to the discharge of pastoral duties, a number of pastors have been requested to undertake with him the editorship of the work, and have consented to assume that responsibility. A few words may be expected from us, as to our principles and aims. This work has never been designed as a rival to the larger quarterlies, which are conducted with so much learning and ability. It is designed rather to be eminently practical, and to act directly on the doctrinal and spiritual interests of the churches, and their ministry, by short articles which all, who will, can find time to read. It is designed to be an organ, through which our denomination. can utter its voice, and make known its views on the great questions of the age.

As a body we occupy a vantage ground from which we cannot be driven, and of which it is our duty to avail ourselves to the utmost.

Among the influences that mould and control the destinies of nations, none are more powerful than those emanating from the principles, and examples of an illustrious ancestry. And no nation can boast of an ancestry more illustrious than the Puritan Fathers of New England. But of these Fathers, we are the legitimate successors and representatives.

Others have departed from their doctrinal views, but we hold them fast. Other modes of Church government have, since their day, been introduced among their descendants; but we still retain

the mode established by them, -a mode which they preferred to all others, and valued above all price, as deduced directly from the Word of God, through long continued and prayerful study. Whatever influence, then, the natural reverence for antiquity may confer, is legitimately ours. In the old world, the Romish Church derives very great power from this source. True, the antiquities of the Scriptural Fathers, that is, of inspired prophets and apostles, are not hers. But to many principles of the Nicene Fathers she can appeal as sustaining her system, and the Fathers of the Middle Ages are hers. In like manner, the architecture and the literature of these ages are hers. All the old cathedrals and universities of England lead the mind back to Rome. Such an influence is fearfully powerful for evil. No one can tell how great a curse to the world those portions of the works of the early fathers have been, from which are still derived the seeds of Puseyism and of Popery, for all nations. Equally great is the blessing to us, that from such pollutions our Fathers had been thoroughly purged, before they became the fountain heads of influence for the present and future millions of this land. Their doctrines, their ecclesiastical polity, and their lives, were pure. They were trees of life, on the banks of the river of the water of life flowing from the sanctuary of God; and the fruit of these trees is still for food, and their leaves are for the healing of the nations.

A work was assigned to them by God, great beyond conception. It was, in few words, to extricate vital religion from the formalism of the old world, to dissolve the unholy and corrupting alliance of the church with the state, and through religious, to establish civil liberty. Our conceptions of the vast importance of their relations to the destinies of the human race, are becoming every year more elevated, as the principles introduced by them are pervading and shaking the world. Such were our Fathers, such their work, and such is the vantage ground on which we stand. We do not say these things to excite pride or boasting, but to affect our minds with a deep sense of responsibility. We are called in our generation to sustain and extend these great principles, and to transmit them unimpaired to future ages. We are called on to do our part of the work that is involved in executing those vast designs of God, which he commenced through them. And who is sufficient for these things? Who has the

holiness, the intellectual enlargement, the moral power, the courage, and the burning zeal, that are demanded for this great work? There is no room for pride. We need rather to be emptied of self, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God.

What, then, is the condition in which we find ourselves when called on to take up and carry forward this great work, and what are the circumstances by which we are surrounded?

We are but a few years removed from certain great religious conflicts, which were undertaken and sustained in defence of the doctrinal principles of our fathers.

These conflicts began about thirty years ago, and conspicuous in them we find such names as Morse, Worcester, Evarts, Codman, Stuart, Woods, Beecher, Wisner, Pond, and Cheever. Their ends were, first, to compel the false system which had privily stolen in to reveal itself; and then, when it was revealed, to confute it, and to expose its unprincipled spoliations, and legalized oppressions of those churches which still revered the faith of their fathers.

As each successive conflict came on, it was, at least in this land, invested with entire novelty; and this fact, together with the vast importance of the questions involved, excited a peculiar and absorbing interest.

But these conflicts were not the result of mere human intellect and emotions. They sprung from, and were attended by, glorious and joyful effusions of the Spirit of God. These were the life of those arduous conflicts, and imparted to them a sanctity, a depth, and a power, which could have proceeded from no other source.

But those scenes have passed by, and, in certain respects, none like them will return. Controversy then put forth its full strength on the leading points at issue, when all was fresh and new; it came to its results, and its novelty is over. What has been well done, needs not to be done again, and the mind of the community cannot be aroused to the same effort. Other revivals, of equal or greater power, may come; but the original interest of past controversies can never be revived. We do not, however, mean to assert that all discussion on the points then at issue is at an end. The signs of the times do not favor such an opinion. It is not at all unlikely that a new vindication of the doctrines of the Trinity and Atonement, with their related truths, may be soon. demanded. All that we mean is, that the first and all-absorbing

interest of such discussions is over; and that if our feelings are to be as much aroused as once they were, the excitement must be derived from other sources. In certain respects this is an advantage. If any points of the past controversy should come up anew, we can then with greater discrimination avail ourselves. of the results of previous discussions, aided by the mature thought and study of intervening years.

The system of error was defeated, we have said. It was, so far as argument was concerned. But defeated as it was in argument, it yet survives, though with greatly diminished power.

But evil influences, of great present and future power, have flowed from that system, which its first promulgators did not anticipate, but which nevertheless must in justice be laid to its charge. The effects of that system are not at an end. It contained from the first, principles which, if logically developed, would result in infidelity. This was openly declared by some farseeing minds. What it has ever tended to in principle, it has now become in form, as held by many; and the greatest momentum, fervor, and mental power are manifested, in the matured and open infidel developments of the system. The authors of these proclaim them as the logical issue of those principles and that progress, for which all have been pleading, and rebuke the timidity of those who dare not maintain a logical consistency with themselves.

And indeed, after all the outcry made in regard to the latest form of infidelity, the earlier leaders of the party were not, in principle, one whit more sound in their views of the inspiration of the Word of God, than the later. They sacrificed the Old Testament to save the New, and practically left nothing in the New but the gospels, and then denied the plenary inspiration of these. In their malignant pantheism, the leaders of the new infidelity have in reality outstripped those of the old; but in other respects the advanced infidel party are in fact, what they claim to be, consistent expositors of the logical results of the system against which we have for years contended.

The dangers which, in these circumstances, call upon us to be on our guard, will readily suggest themselves to a thoughtful mind. There is often a collapse, when a community has passed out of a period of conflict and of high excitement which cannot be revived. To those who remember this excitement, the regular course of spiritual progress may seem tame; and the mind may