WE are moving slowly and surely. For the present the Signs will not be published oftener than once in two weeks. This will give us more time to make up our list of subscribers before we are far advanced in the first volume. In fact, want of sufficient help has made it necessary to go very slow. In a few months we hope to obtain ten thousand subscribes, and by that time we shall have a competent force to issue the SIGNS weekly. This number has been delayed in consequence of the sale of the entire office where the types were set, and the purchase of new material throughout.
The first page contains the conclusion of our exposition of the kingdom question. The truth upon this subject evidently lies between the two extremes which are arrayed against each other. One has the kingdom set up about the time of the first advent of Christ. The other labors hard with many opposing difficulties, to harmonize all the texts that mention the kingdom with the idea that no kingdom whatever is established, and will not be until the second advent. Our view of the kingdom of grace, set up immediately after the fall, and the kingdom of glory, to be set up in close connection with the second advent, harmonizes all the texts that mention the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of Heaven.
We shall be happy to give from issue to issue rich thought upon the subject of the eternal abode of the saved, from the pen of Eld. Loughborough. His article on page twenty-six is but the commencement.
"A Sign of the Day of God," on the same page is a natural and forcible application of the prophecy.
The positions we occupy respecting the perpetuity of the moral code are not new. We are sustained by the Protestant world, with very few exceptions, for past centuries. Let the article, "The Ten Commandments," on page twenty-seven, be carefully read. But especially should the extract from the learned and godly Wesley on "The Law of God," taken from his discourse upon Christ's sermon on the mount, be studied well. This good and great man has forcibly presented the views of those whom God especially used to bring the church out and up from the darkness of past ages to a living faith in God as the law-giver, and Christ as the Redeemer. The law-abolished heresy of our time is the grand resort to evade the force of the literal construction of the wording of the fourth commandment.
Those who hold that the law of the Father, and the gospel of the Son, are in opposition to each other, that the latter took the place of the former, may be very much helped by a careful examination of the article on page twenty-eight, which shows that "The Gospel Dispensation" is not less than six thousand year long, embracing all the ages of human probation. Before we leave the grand theme of redemption through Christ, we shall make it appear that the moral code of the great God, and the system of pardon and redemption through Jesus Christ, run parallel from the fall, to the completion of the work of redemption.
Our views of the unity of the church, as expressed under the caption "Leadership," are not new. In fact, these thoughts are but a revision of what we have written upon the subject of Christian unity, which has appeared in the Review occasionally for the past twenty-four years. We then took the position that God had provided ample means for the unity and perfection of his people, and that he would especially bring to bear these means to perfect the church in the last days, ready for translation to Heaven without seeing death. This glad faith and hope have been the main-spring of our efforts for a quarter of a century in the work of bringing out a people upon unpopular truth, to make ready for the coming of the Lord. And we here confess that there has not been an hour for the last twenty-four years, should our faith have been shaken in the idea that the true church would come to perfect unity, but we should have sunken beneath the discouragements that have beset our toiling, wearing course. Thank God that we live to see the day when the power of present truth and the holy Spirit are making his people one.
The subject of the "Temptation of Christ," as brought out by Mrs. W., is opening a new field of thought, calculated to draw out the tenderest feelings of all who really love our Lord Jesus Christ, and give them more exalted views