AFTER over half-a-century of the uninterrupted publication of our denominational monthly periodical, is it not time that we paused to render to the Lord the thanks and glory which are His due for His merciful superintending Providence in this connection? While time, as with “an overflowing flood,” carries its readers to the endless, shoreless, fathomless ocean of Eternity, thus solemnly varying the personnel, the magazine itself continues, as it began, bearing faithful uncompromising witness to the Scriptural, Reforming, and Covenanting doctrines of free and sovereign grace. Thus, when spiritual and moral “darkness is covering the earth and gross darkness the people,” it casts the shining beam of pure Gospel truth, like a life-directing searchlight over the dark, cold, boisterous waters of prevailing errors and heresies and abounding iniquity, warning off the shoals and rocks on which contemporaries, in their millions, are making irretrievable shipwreck, while feeding God’s heritage with “the finest of the wheat.”
Is this not, consequently, an opportune and appropriate occasion to quicken and revive our interest in an important branch of the work of the Lord? It is sad to think that there are still families in our church into whose homes the denominational magazine never enters. What real interest in the denominational welfare can there be in homes of which this is true? Is it not the clear duty of ministers and missionaries to impress upon our people the duty of subscribing regularly to the denominational periodical? The magazine in our homes is an important denominational connecting link, and one of the sure signs of fellowship and intelligent interest in the church’s prosperity. Its price is certainly not the difficulty, for the family is rare indeed, if not non-existent, which cannot afford 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ d. a month for its copy. If some old-age pensioners can buy both magazines, in addition to their daily newspapers, where is the excuse for any other? Let us enter 1947, then, with the resolution to have a magazine in every home, and let every reader further resolve to secure another subscribing reader, thus guaranteeing the establishing of the financial foundation of our excellent Evangelical Protestant periodical on a sound and secure basis. Let us earnestly seek to widen its circulation.
It would be expecting too much, human nature being what it is, to produce a magazine that would please everybody and offend nobody. Some find fault with the magazine because it contains, periodically, reproductions from the pens of the godly and spiritually-minded worthies of past generations, but judicious editorial supervision has wisely and rightly decided otherwise. Where, since the magazine’s beginning, amidst the best productions of to-day is to be found anything comparable to the soundly spiritual and theologically Scriptural writings of the Scottish, English, and American divines of the best periods of the church in each of these countries? Other orthodox Evangelical periodicals omit such writings to the spiritual detriment of their readers. In our magazine, on the contrary, the past and the present are judiciously balanced and blended, to the great advantage of its readers. Brethren, pray for the Editor, the magazine, and its readers.
—A Reader.