Review and Herald by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1884

Review and Herald.

By Editor

THIS paper—"our church paper"—has commenced its sixty-first half-yearly volume, and its conductors have been making improvements on it also. It has a neat rule border around its pages, which will prove a saving, being intended for a protection to the type on the edges of the pages, which are most liable to injury on a cylinder press, as well as for improved appearance.

Elder G. I. Butler is on its staff as Corresponding Editor. He wields a ready and vigorous pen, and as he has no other editorial work on his hands, this addition cannot fail to add to the interest and usefulness of the Review.

It is now within a few days of thirty years since we first saw the "Advent Review," and our acquaintance with it has been quite close ever since. Some of the time we have been connected with it in the office, and always taken the deepest interest in its prosperity. The following words from its editor, in its first number of this volume, we have read with much regret:—

"This paper has been, from the beginning of the message which we believe is the last to go to perishing men, the organ and exponent of this work. From the records of its columns may be traced the principles and polity of this cause, its advance movements, its struggles and victories, through all its progress. The growth of the work in these later years has been in many respects remarkable. Its friends and adherents have increased greatly in numbers. Yet the subscription list of the REVIEW runs along year after year at about the same figure, the accessions being scarcely more than the losses. Without stopping to inquire why this is so, any of our patrons will be ready to admit that it ought not to be so."

In the earlier days of this work we measured the success of our labors, not so much by the number who professed the faith, as by the number who subscribed for the Review. If they refused to take that paper we had great fears that they would fall away from their profession; and we found that this was generally the case. It was a source of continual strength and encouragement to "the little flock." It fed their faith with plain, doctrinal truths—present truth—which the scattered ones so much needed. And they need them yet. On this point Eld. Butler, in the same number, says:—

"We have no faith whatever that good talk about devotion, prayer, and the ordinary duties of religion, however good in itself, and however necessary, can supply the place of the glorious doctrines of the last message. These must be brought prominently before this generation, and they must ever be burning brightly in our own hearts. Otherwise, our zeal will lag, and our piety become like that of those around us who have no faith in these truths. These glorious doctrines have ever given point and life to our work."

Our response to this is a hearty, Amen. At the Oakland missionary meeting on the evening of January 8, the Director was instructed by a unanimous vote to make or have made a thorough canvass of this church in behalf of the Review and of Good Health. This is a move which we expect will be followed up on all this Pacific country.