ARTICLE IV.

THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.

By Rev. W. R. Williams, D. D., Pastor of the Amity-street Baptist Church, New-York.

The Christian Library, 45 vols., 400 pages each. The Evangelical Family Library, 15 volumes. The Youth's Christian Library, 40 volumes.

THE American Tract Society has been for years a familiar and cherished name with our churches. But many, even of intelligent Christians, have probably scarce made themselves conversant with its varied publications, or considered duly the influence it was likely to wield over the religious literature of our own and other lands. They have thought, perhaps, of the Institution as furnishing a few excellent Tracts in the form of loose pamplets, and supposed these, with some children's books, to constitute the entire sum of its issues; while, in truth, the Society, noiselessly following the beckonings of Divine Providence, has been led to undertake the publication of volumes, and to furnish libraries for Christian churches, schools, and households. These heedless observers have thought of it mostly in connection with a few favorite Tracts written in our own vernacular language; while, in fact, the Society has come to be engaged in the circulation of books and Tracts in more tongues than the richest Polyglott comprises, and is extending its operations through lands more numerous and remote than any one probably of the most widely-travelled of its readers has ever traversed. The moral and intellectual character of the religious literature thus widely diffused deserves some thoughts.*

* It was made recently the subject of examination. At a special meeting of the Society and its friends, convened in the city of New-York a few months since, several subjects were presented for consideration, as bearing on the character, plans, and duties of the Society. Amongst these was (( THE EVANGELICAL CHARACTER OF THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY, AND THEIR ADAPTATION TO THE WANTS OF THE PRESENT GENERATION OF MAN

KIND, AT HOME AND ABROAD.' Upon the subject so assigned to the writer, the following remarks were prepared.

The various publications of the Society in our own land, if we include its issues of every form and size, from the handbill and the broad sheet, up to the bound volume, already number one thousand. In foreign lands it aids in issuing nearly twice that number, written in some one hundred of the different languages and dialects of the earth. Amongst ourselves, in the seventeen years of its existence, it has already, by sale or gift, scattered broad-cast over the whole face of the land, in our churches and Sabbath-schools, through our towns and villages, among the neglected, in the lanes of our large cities, where misery retires to die, and vice to shelter itself from the eye of day, and amidst the destitute, sparsely sprinkled over our wide frontiers, where the ministry has scarce followed, and the church can scarce gather the scattered inhabitants, some two millions of books and some sixty millions of Tracts. This is no ordinary influence. It must find its way into nearly every vein and artery of the body politic. Whether it be of a pure and healthful character, is an inquiry of grave moment to the churches who sustain this enterprise, and to the country which receives this literature. If baneful, it is a grievous wrong to the community; if merely inert and useless, it is a fraud committed upon the benevolence of the churches.

I. Whether these publications deserve the confidence of Christians, may be ascertained by the answer which is given to one question: Do THEY PREACH JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED? He must be the theme of every successful ministry, whether preaching from the pulpit or through the press. The blessing of God's Spirit is promised only to the exaltation of the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." When Paul describes the peculiarities of his own successful ministry—a ministry that shook the nations -a ministry that carried the blazing torch of its testimony from Illyricum to Spain, he compresses these into a very brief space. He was determined to know nothing but Christ Jesus and him crucified. In Christ he found the motive which stimulated all his fervid and untiring activity, and the model upon which was moulded every excellence of his character. "To me to live is

Christ." Only so far as the issues of this Society cherish this same principle does it ask, and only so far can it deserve, from the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ, that cordial support and that large extension of its labors which it solicits at the hands of the religious community.

And not only is it necessary to the success of such ministry of the press, that it should make the crucified Saviour the great theme of its teachings; it should also present this theme, as far as possible, in a scriptural manner. By this we mean, not a mere iteration of the words of sacred writ, but that the mind of the writer should be so imbued with the spirit of the Scripture, and so possessed by its doctrines, and so haunted by its imagery and illustrations, as to present, naturally and earnestly, the great truths of the scheme of salvation, in that proportion and with those accompaniments which are found in the inspired volume. His thoughts must all be habited, as far as it may be, in the garb, and breathe the spirit of that only book to which we can ascribe unmingled truth.

That the works of the American Tract Society are thus evangelical in their character, would seem scarce needing proof, since none, as far as we know, have yet questioned it. Amid the fierce and embittered controversies, from which the church has never been exempt, (and certainly not in our own times,) we know not that any, among the several bodies of Christians generally recognized as evangelical, have arisen to impugn in this respect the character of the Society's issues. This has not been because these books have been secretly circulated. They have been found everywhere, dropped in the highway and lodged in the pastor's study, distributed in the nursery, the railcar, the steam-boat, and the stage-coach, as well as exposed on the shelves of the book-store, and they have challenged the investigation of all into whose hands they have come. Denominations of Christians, divided from each other by varying views as to the discipline and polity of the church of Christ, and even holding opposite sentiments as to some of the more important doctrines of the Gospel, have yet agreed in recognizing in these publications the great paramount truths of that Gospel, and have co-operated long, liberally, and harmoniously, in their distribution and use.

The names of the authors whose volumes are found in friendly juxtaposition, standing side by side on the shelves of the libraries the Society has provided for the Christian household and school, seem to furnish another strong pledge to the same effect. Doddridge, Baxter, Edwards, Owen, Flavel, and Bunyan, are names that seem to belong less to any one division of the Christian host than to the whole family of Christ. They are the current coin of the church, which have passed so freely from

hand to hand, that the minuter superscription of the sects to which they may have belonged, the denominational imprint, seems to have been worn away in the wide, unquestioned circulation they have received. And they have been acknowledged by evangelical believers, wherever the English language and literature have gone, as faithful and most powerful preachers of the Gospel of Christ. They have received higher attestation even than that of having their "praise" thus "in all the churches." The Head of the church has not withholden his benediction and imprint. The influence of His Spirit has long and largely rested on the written labors of these his servants; and, while the authors themselves have been in the grave, their works are yet following them in lengthening and widening trains of usefulness. Multitudes have been converted, and thousands of others have traced to these books their own growth in Christian holiness. Some of these writers were, while upon the earth, not inactive or unsuccessful as preachers with the living voice; yet it may be questioned whether all the seals of their living ministry would equal the tithe of the seals which God has continued to set to their posthumous ministry in the volumes they have bequeathed to the world and the church.

II. But how far are they adapted to the wants of THE PRESENT GENERATION OF MANKIND? We know that in the varying tastes and habits of society, and its ever-shifting currents of feeling, new channels of thought are scooped out, and new forms of expression become popular; and the writer whose compositions present not these forms and move not in these channels, may find himself deserted as obsolete. His works are consigned to the unmolested and dusty shelves of the antiquarian, while other and fresher rivals grasp the sceptre of popularity and usefulness that has passed from his hands. New conditions of society and new institutions also, may require another style of address and another train of instruction than those which, once indeed, were most salutary and seasonable, but are so no longer. If other classes of literature become antiquated, and the old give place to the new, may it not be so with religious literature? may it not be so with much of the literature from which the American Tract Society is seeking to supply the Christians of the present age?

1. What then are the wants of the present age? Religion, it should be remembered, if true, must be in its great principles unchangeable, and the same in all eras of the world's history.

"Can length of years on God himself exact,

And make that fiction which was once a fact ?"

A revelation, from its source and the nature of its contents, possesses, therefore, a fixedness and constancy that can belong to no science of merely human origin. The Bible stands apart from all the literature of man's devising, as a book never to be superseded susceptible of no amendment, and never to be made obsolete whilst the world stands. The book of the world's Creator and the world's Governor, the record of the world's history and the world's duty, the world's sin and the world's salvation, it will endure while that world lasts, and continue to claim its present authority as long as that government over the present world may continue. Religious works, therefore, the more profoundly they are imbued with the spirit of the Bible, will the more nearly partake of its indestructibility. Hence the Confessions of Augustine, written so many centuries ago, are not yet an obsolete book, nor can be while the human heart and the Christian religion continue the same that they now are. In their religious literature, the church and the world in the nineteenth century must, therefore, in most respects, have the same wants as the church and the world in earlier ages.

It will be allowed, however, that there are certain peculiarities in the history and character of an age that may make one form of address and one style of discussion much more useful and reasonable in its religious literature than another. Has our country at this period any such peculiar wants? We might refer to many circumstances in its government and its people, their pursuits and their character, which distinguish, and as it were, individualize our land and our age. But to sum them all in one word, we suppose the main distinction and boast of our people is, that they are a practical race. Others theorize; they act. Visionary reforms and schemes of society, that might in other regions be nursed for centuries in the brains of philosophers, and be deemed practicable only because they have never been reduced to practice, if they find proselytes amongst us, are soon brought to the test of actual experiment; their admirers here act upon the theories, which, elsewhere, are but reasoned. upon, and the system, exploding in the trial, refutes itself. Our countrymen, the colonists of a wide and fertile territory, the mariners whose keels vex every shore, and whose sails whiten the remotest seas, inherit the solid sense, the sober judgment, the energy, daring, and perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon race;