The Christian Examiner and General Review Volume 25 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Akt. III. ? The Western Messenger; devoted to Religion and Literature. Vol. V. No. I. April, 1838. Louisville. Conducted by James Freeman Clarke. The first number of this periodical, " devoted to religion and literature," was published at Cincinnati, in July, 1835. It began with a subscription list which it was supposed would ensure its support, as contributions were to be gratuitous; and with the not unnatural hope on the part of its conductors that every year would see this list increase. Three years have passed, and it is still struggling for mere existence. During the last spring its energetic and laborious editor, the Rev. James F. Clarke, of Louisville, feared that he should be obliged to abandon the work, or, at least, to reduce it, and would have been obliged to do one or the other, had not assistance been given him by subscriptions at Mobile. All this proves that the class of money-paying Unitarians has not grown at the West as it was hoped would be the case. It was thought that many persons, who were dissatisfied with prevalent forms of religious worship, and who knew of none more suitable to their ideas, would learn, by means of the Messenger, that a form of faith did exist with which they could sympathize. Many such persons were found, but they were, in general, little disposed to pay for the new faith that was offered them, though they might be very willing to receive it; in other words, they had no particular objection to Unitarianism, but cared very little for religion at all. At first sight this all seems very discouraging; and, although a strong society has grown up at St. Louis under Mr. Elliott's charge, and though those at Louisville and Mobile are doing well, the general condition of Western Unitarian churches is not such as to make us feel, that our p...