The Guardian.

VOL. XVIII.–JANUARY, 1867.-No. 1.

WORDS OF CHEER FROM THE OLD EDITOR.

We have had hard head-work to get a caption for what we are about to write. We thought of "Parting Words," and then of "Farewell Words;" but none of these will do; for we intend neither to part with the Guardian, nor to say farewell to it. We intend still to love it, write for it, and bid it God's speed, as we have ever done.

At length we struck upon the thing exactly: "Words of Cheer." That is it exactly. Words of cheer for our long-loved magazine-we can speak none other.

But we must first tell the story in hand.

The name of our new editor appears on the title page-one into whose hands this work falls at our own suggestion, and one whose name and experience may well give assurance to all, that the magazine will be conducted with energy and success.

Our withdrawal from the editorship of the Guardian is, in the circumstances, a simple necessity. It has pleased "the powers that be" to lay on us the office of editor of the "Mercersburg Review," which, after a suspension of five years, is to appear anew with the beginning of the year 1867. We have felt it our duty, for reasons not necessary to be here enumerated, to accept this appointment. This, as any one will readily see, requires that the editing of the Guardian should be devolved upon another.

Though convinced as to the course of duty, yet we have not been able to come into this arrangement without a struggle. Seventeen years ago, in our early ministry, full of youth and enthusiasm, we started the Guardian in Lewisburg, Pa.-started it with plenty of faith and hope, but without funds or subscribers. A kind providence gave it a success far beyond our most sanguine expectations. In 1850 we carried our sweet burden with us to Lancaster. After ten and a half years, we took it with us again to our new home in Lebanon. Three years later we brought it with us to Mercersburg, where it has again been our companion three years longer. In our study, and as by our side, it has grown up from infancy, through childhood, into full youth. Every year has it hung upon our Christmas-tree, as an offering to Christ in the service of the young.

VOL. XVIII.-1

To part with it, even with the assurance that it will live on, and perhaps even live better than ever before, has, to us, something of the nature of a bereavement in the family.

How many, many memories,

Come o'er my spirit now!

However, what would otherwise have been to us a sadness, is relieved of that feature, when we call to mind that our Guardian is to live on, and know that it has fallen into such zealous and worthy hands. The new editor, besides being a ripe scholar, and a vigorous and successful pastor, has had the advantage of extensive travel in Europe, Africa, and Asia; has always been a close student and careful observer, and is thus possessed of varied acquirements, and a rich personal experience of the world. Nor is the work of an editor a new thing to him, having labored some years very successfully in this peculiar department. And what is more than all, he loves the young, and has himself a heart that will never grow old. To him, with full confidence and a cheerful heart, do we commit the conduct of the Guardian, and hereby commend him and his work to the warm co-operation of all our old friends.

We have no words of "farewell" to speak to our readers, because we do not propose to part with such long-tried friends. Though not as editor, still as contributor, we expect to meet them often in the future on these friendly pages.

Finally, of whom shall I think in these closing words, but of Thee, kind heavenly Father, who hast so constantly watched over this work through many years past? Let Thy most gracious blessing still follow it into the future! In Thy name it was commenced, for Thine honor continued from year to year, and to Thy favor I now commend it with a thankful, hopeful, and believing heart. Accept of our poor work for Thy name's glory, through

Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

H. HARBAUGH.

INTRODUCTORY.

We have learned from experience, that it is not an easy task to succeed Dr. H. Harbaugh. His writings, like himself, are unique. In reading and admiring his Saxon monosyllables, his terse, compact, clear, simple style, we have often been reminded of him, whose "words were half-battles." He abhors redundancy and obscurity of diction, as Nature abhors a vacuum. His mode of thinking, writing and speaking, are peculiar to himself. They are inheritable qualities, but cannot be acquired. None but his offspring can share them.

The Guardian is his child; the child of his early professional life. In it he made his maiden efforts at authorship. He was then a young man, in full and deep sympathy with the young. Experience had taught him the perils of the road they had to travel. His ascent of the Hill of Science had been along a steep and rugged path. He knew the dangers and hardships of the way. This taught him to sympathize with the trials, aspirations and hopes of the young. To many of these he pointed the way into the ministry; to more the way to Calvary and the crown of life.

Into the Guardian he breathed the dewy freshness of his May-day life. Sixteen years have sprinkled his head with the marks of coming autumn, and given to it a more mature and staid bearing. And yet its sympathy with the young and the adaptation of its teaching to their peculiar wants, are the same now as then.

The Guardian, too, is unique, like its father and founder. He has woven into its texture sixteen years of his life. It has grown with his growth. Its pages bear the imprint of his faith, hope and love; of his joy and sorrow. The tear-drops of his bereavement are seen in many a line of plaintive poetry and prose, from which sorrowing hearts, in coming years, will derive sweet consolation. Upon every page of this monthly he has photographed himself.

We preached our first sermon in Dr. Harbaugh's church, at Lancaster, Pa. His kindly sympathy with us in our timid maiden effort we shall ever gratefully remember. Now his hand leads us on another pulpit; he bids us speak in his stead. A learned author warns us to "beware of the man whom no one can succeed." This man has lived his earnest life into the Guardian. Who can follow him without embarrassment? Our misgivings in assuming its editorial management can easily be accounted for.

Ten years ago we wrote a descriptive sketch for the Guardian in the shade of Mount Sinai. One of the greatest pleasures derived from that writing was the thought, that, in our far-off home, friendly readers would consent to read the story of all we "felt and all we saw." Since then we have often spoken to them through these pages. We feel that we are not entirely a stranger to them. We enter upon these duties at the request of Dr. Harbaugh. The spirit and aims of the Guardian shall be as heretofore. No efforts shall be spared to make it instructive. Such as we have, we give.

The Guardian has had an able corps of contributors. We earnestly invite them to continue their labors in its behalf. Dr. Harbaugh has kindly consented to continue writing for it. In his language used fifteen years ago, we devoutly pray, that "the Spirit of purity may preside over our pages, and keep us from publishing a line

Which dying, we could wish to blot.”

NEW YEAR.

BY REV. D. GANS D. D.

In the 29th Psalm we find an application to God, that He would remember, urged by two reasons of an opposite character, the shortness of our allotted days,-first by mercies, and second by apparent calamities. In view of the first, the Psalmist is joyful and full of praise, but in view of the second, his spirit droops and is poured out in sadness and complaint.

Even such is our life. Prosperities and adversities, light and darkness, joys and sorrows are the commingling ingredients of our present existence; and when we forget the great truth, that afflictions also come from God, and may be productive of the greatest good, we shall not be able to check the spirit of complaint when these come upon us.

It is difficult in reference to a life like ours, which reaches through the grave into an illimitable eternity, and is made to run parallel with the existence of God himself, for us to say, from our own intelligence, what is good or what is evil. Nay, we think it must be the conviction of every mind reflecting seriously upon the subject, that we cannot possibly know this of ourselves; and that in regard to this matter, no less than in reference to the true idea of God and proper conception of eternity, we are dependent wholly upon the revelation which God has made.

Or

Even if our being commenced in time and ended in time, so that it should fall entirely within the scope of our natural vision, we should not be able fully at its beginning, or at any one of its points, to understand it. For who can tell this hour what will be our condition the next hour? who can tell what act this hour will affect us favorably the next hour? Ay, does not the veil suspended by the finger of providence conceal from us even the next moment! Who among us knew with prophetic certainty, a year ago, that we should live to see its end? And who can say that it is well that we have thus been spared? Our schemes and plans all rest in the same general uncertainty. Now an idea strikes us in reference to some supposed future good, and we hasten to put it into active operation, but no sooner has it yielded its legitimate fruits than we bitterly repent of the thought that brought it into existence and the act that connected it practically with our lives. We say that we were disappointed, and such disappointments are experienced at every point in our lives. And often, when we least expect any good, we are literally surrounded with blessings. It is not in man to direct his steps, or to say at any point what act on his own part, or what dispensation on the part of providence, is either good or evil for him. Now if our present existence be of such a nature that we cannot tell, independently of revelation, what is good or evil in reference to it, how much less can we do this when, with the present, we connect that part of our existence which will continue to stretch through all eternity! What mind, bounded by the present, can understand such a life, and say what will be for its good or its evil?

We may talk about what we call prosperity and greatly rejoice in it, but are we sure that prosperity is best for us upon the whole? We may complain of what we call adversity, and sometimes feel under it that we are the most miserable of all men-that our whole existence will be a sad disappointment, and yet how do we know but that this is the very start of our highest and most perfect well-being? How bold we often are, to take this whole subject into our own hands, as though we understood it perfectly from beginning to end, and lament when we ought to rejoice, and rejoice when we ought to mourn! And how ungrateful to permit ourselves, in our short-sightedness, to complain over what in the end proves to be our richest mercies!

Poverty, sickness, shortness of life. What are these-blessings or curses? We know how they are generally regarded. If we could see the secret purpose of God from whom they come, and their effect upon our existence ten, fifty, one hundred, or one thousand years hence, we might be in a condition to answer the question definitely. The truth in the case depends wholly upon revelation; and so far as the general purpose of God is concerned in these apparently adverse things, we learn from this revelation, that it is good, kind and merciful.

Our time is short! As the design of God in this is merciful, so is the

fact itself intended to have a good effect upon our minds and hearts. There is a blessing in all things, if men would only see it-so is there a blessing in the shortness of life.

There are various means providentially afforded, by which we may impress upon our spirits the shortness of our time; and through the impression be led to the lasting good which God proffers to us.

The first is by looking backward. If, standing at the beginning of a new year, we look back, for instance, through the old, which is fled forever, we cannot but feel its shortness. It appears but as a few days. At its beginning, looking up through its 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8760 hours, it might appear a long time; but how rapidly did it pass away; and when at midnight 66 became 67, we looked back from some dark summit upon it, how did it seem like an unstable shadow, a changing picture, an unsubstantial dream! As the old year receded, we, taken up in the bosom of the new, passed forward; and no one could calmly listen to the clock announcing one-two-three-four, &c., and see the chasm widening as time advanced, without unconsciously exclaiming How short is my time! One year older-one year nearer the dread point at which time will cease and eternity begin!

Such is not only the feeling which the termination of 365 days creates in our minds in regard to the past year, but also in reference to all past time falling within our experience. The distance between childhood and youth, youth and manhood, manhood and old age, is very short. So brief is the interval, when looked back upon from the farthest point-even that of four score years, that in the mind of the aged no two things are more closely associated than the cradle and the grave. The poet has said, that "Time is a fragment of eternity cut off at both ends." Standing in the middle, we cannot but feel that the end on either side is not far removed. Time itself is a great mystery which no one can know, and in its connection with our persons, a most solemn fact filled with the most momentous consequences. Among all laborers, time is the most industrious. To-day we are born, to-morrow we think and act, next day we die; and the character of our eternity is the result of the brief process! Well may each say, as did the Psalmist: "Oh Lord, remember how short my time is!"

But there is another way by which the shortness of time impresses itself upon us-it is a form in which time itself speaks to us through its victims. How often during the past year were we called upon to enter the house of mourning! and as we pass forward through the crowd of afflicted relatives and sympathizing friends, up to the object sacred to the deepest affection, what did we see? Perhaps a child of two, three, four, or five summers, its bosom still, its little hands folded in the last sleep, its whole body motionless, cold, dead! Turning away the eye from the smile of beauty playing upon the face of the infant dead, what was our deepest feeling, what our most earnest words? How short the time! Or perhaps it was a full grown son, who, with great promise of body and mind, was just passing into manhood, to link himself with the earnest problems of life; or a wife, or a husband in the midst of a little family dependent upon him; or it may have been the aged father or mother, who had reached their three score years and ten; and yet gazing upon them, now in death, how strongly are we impressed with the shortness of time! How brief the space since in happy childhood we sat upon their knees! For what are 60-70 years! A dream-at death a tale that is told! Thus all are impressed.