THE PRESENT

Will appear in monthly numbers, containing thirty-six octavo pages each; and will form a volume of four hundred and thirty-two pages annually. The subscription price is two dollars a year, paid in advance.

The PRESENT, as its name indicates, is designed to reflect the Signs of the Times. Its aim will be, to aid all movements which seem fitted to produce union and growth in Religion, Science, and Society. It will seek to reconcile faith and free inquiry, law and liberty, order and progress; to harmonize sectarian and party differences by statements of universal principles; and to animate hopeful efforts on all sides to advance the Reign of Heaven on earth. It will endeavor to discuss the various questions of Reform which are now interesting our communities with sincerity and candor; to encourage and note the progress of spiritual and humane enterprises to remove ignorance, vice, and suffering; to record discoveries and inventions which promise to elevate man's condition; and by notices of native and foreign books, with extracts and translations, by descriptions and criticisms of artistic creations, as well as by tales and poems from our own authors, to unite beauty with truth and love. Its pages are open to all who can express their convictions with good sense and feeling; and the aid of friendly contributors is requested. Communications should be addressed to William Henry Channing. Letters on business may be directed

to The Present.

NEW YORK: Office of Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, 142 Fulton street.

THE PRESENT.

VOLUME I.

SEPTEMBER, 1843.

NUMBER I.

INTRODUCTION.

THE Present is the Name given to the Monthly, whose first number is here offered to its readers, because this name most exactly decribes the ground it seeks to occupy. With gratitude for the Past, whose toils reclaimed the mountains, cleared the woodlands, fenced the prairies, which we inherit—and with hope for the Future, who shall change our quaking bogs to verdant meadows, our sandy wastes to gardens-would it aid the bands of fellow-workers in the broad field, which the Present offers to our care, ploughing furrows, scattering seed, weeding, reaping, as the day may bid. Its end will be gained, if it can be a means of quickening confidence in the sublime destinies of this Christened though not Christianised Anglo-Saxon Race, in this land of their adoption, with their mingled traits of reverence and boldness, loyalty to custom and courage for adventure, pertinacity and earnestness, enthusiasm and practical skill; with their religiousness and free thought, their honor of woman and blunt courtesy, their aristocratic freedom, as yet imperfectly tempered by charity, their capacity of tender and poetic feeling, too much hidden under rough speech and dull manners, their power of growth and sense of young vigor, still imbued by the harsh rapacity of pirate ancestors. Its special aim will be, to show the grounds of reconciliation between the sects and parties, native and foreign, the controversies, theological and political, the social reformers and prudent conservatives, the philosophers and poets, prophets and doubters, which divide these United States. It aspires to teach, that all earnest seekers of holiness, truth, humanity, are co-laborers, under the leading of one heavenly hand, and that our Nation has a plain and urgent duty in common with the Grand Fraternity of Christendom, to advance the Reign of Heaven on Earth. May it do something, in however humble a way, to call out fidelity to the Divine

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Guidance in this land of promise, to which Providence led our forefathers in the fullness of time.

There is the appearance of Cant, and unquestionably the danger of Cant, too, in the use of formulas, and yet it is convenient, sometimes, to condense meaning in a brief sentence; therefore, it may be said, that the call of the Present is for the Union and Growth of Religion, Science, and Society. We need this Union; for as heart, lungs, and limbs combine to circulate our life's blood, so must inspiration, wisdom, and industry cowork, to rear in healthful symmetry the living organisation of Humanity. We need this Growth; for, whatsoever is not assimilating fresh nutriment, has passed its prime, and is more or less rapidly dying, and no one will pretend that Religion, Science, and Society have yet reached maturity. We need fulness of spirituality; in its due place and proportion we need equally perfected social relations amidst the fullness of material beauty; and reason, warmed, enlightened, animated by divine life, must mediate between them, and wed the Church and State in indissoluble union. Religion tends necessarily to form itself into Science, and through Science to embody itself in Society; and happy conditions of existence. react upon our powers of intelligence, and prepare them for admitting purer influence from the Eternal world. Every Age is a peculiar one;

it can not repeat the experience of the past, neither can it anticipate the fulfilments of the future; its work is to unfold the essential principles of human nature, in such forms as are fit in their season. The peculiarity of our Age is, that having passed through an era of almost universal religious, scientific, and social infidelity, we are entering a new era of yet more universal faith, which demands its own worship, philosophy, and social arrangements. Is the hope extravagant, that its laws may be more nearly modelled upon the types of divine justice; that its doctrines may more adequately express absolute ideas; that its reception of goodness may be more perfect than earlier times were capable of? Can we hope less? Our need to-day, though different in appearance, is intrinsically the same with that which all generations of the past have experienced, and which all generations must feel who are to follow, till Love, Truth, and Beauty possess our race, and fulfil the destinies of Humanity on Earth.

This little Monthly, then, has quite liberal aims; and it may justly be asked what are its editor's qualifications. With unaffected sincerity he confesses that he has none, other than the craving after a temper and spirit more in harmony with our privileges, a willingness to admit and abandon error and folly when exposed, independence, to some degree, from sectarian and party bonds, faith in the present inspiration and providence of God, hope growing ever stronger in the tendencies of the Age to universal good, and a devoted love for the Christian-German race in this