THE GUARDIAN: A Magazine Devoted to the Interests of Young Meu and Ladies. VOL. VIII. JULY, 1857. 'No. 7. NEWSPAPER INDECENCIES. BY THE EDITOR. THE fearful extent of indecency and vulgarity which has been reached by many of our secular newspapers is beginning to be sorely felt. These papers are even beginning to expose and reprove one another. With what shameless detail are all the particulars of vulgar trials, with their vulgar testimony, paraded before the public. In this way the pure over the land are daily insulted by the moral stench of city degradation, and the morbid, beastly souls of the impure fed with new iniquities. The time was, says the Baltimore Patriot, truly, when these horrors and pruriences were confined, in fiction, to novels from the French, and in fact to the Newgate Calendar, and works of a kindred stamp. But that period has passed away, and now our leading newspapers combine the worst features of both, by seizing every opportunity of spreading before their readers the minutest circumstances connected with acts of gross licentiousness, as disclosed before the public tribunals, and of narrating with the most revolting particularity the testimony of witnesses with respect to crimes still more awful. Not only indecent trials are thus reported, but the most abominable advertisements are to be seen in almost all our papers. While there are many who breathe freely and naturally in this kind of atmosphere, there are many also to whom the thing is growing into an intolerable evil. The extent to which the disgust of a large portion of newspaper patrons has risen, is not suspected by many papers which have been led gradually to grow in the desire of pampering to this wretched taste. We know persons who have stopped old and once favorite papers from no other cause. We know also others, who from a desire to retain such papers on account of other qualities, are prompt to watch their appearance from week to week, and from day to day, in order to keep them out of the hands of their children-still delaying and debating whether to proscribe and send them back finally. The matter begins to come earnestly home to the business and bosom of all who have wives or sisters, or daughters, or sons, "with eyes to read a newspaper, or ears to hear a newsboy." We join heartily with some high-minded journalists in saying, we are glad to see that many of the most respectable papers of the country join in protesting against the publication of indecent trials, and all those low advertisements which in many journals insult the eyes of the pure. "What wonder is it, that the cause of good morals should suffer grievous injury, and the growth of the religious sentiment be impeded, when able but unscrupulous publicists, for a trifling pecuniary gain, daily pander to the morbid tastes of the community, and thus sap the very foundations of morality and virtue ?" It is only by comparing the present style of newspapers with those of former times that the full and fearful degeneracy can be seen. We had occasion some time ago in course of investigations pertaining to another matter, to examine old files of newspapers in the Philadelphia Library, when we were forcibly reminded of this downward tendency in the character and style of newspapers. What a dignity, gravity, classic earnestness, and moral purity distinguished the papers of earlier days from many of the wishy-washy sheets of the present day. We were struck particularly by the dignity kept up in the department of Anecdotes. Not a single one after the style of our modern bar-room anecdotes, born in low ignorance, was to be seen; they were all dignified, instructive, conceived in the spirit of true wisdom, wit, and humor. We cannot forbear to remark, how wit and humor, so excellent in themselves, are degraded in most of our newspapers, even in those which are professedly devoted to the illustration of these powers, and which undertake to provide for this taste. Low caricature, foolish sayings, and silly things, you have in abundance; but genuine wit and humor, scarcely once a month. These occur not at all as the rule, but only by accident as the exception. There is too much superficiality, too little earnestness and solemnity, to perceive, much less to produce, true wit and pure humor. If the wits and humorists of the old English school should happen among our modern newspaper pretenders to wit, they would suppose themselves to have happened into a lunatic asylum. As it is against the indecency of a great many of our newspapers that we are protesting, we will appeal to the reader's judgment whether a large proportion of what is intended as witty and humorous is not downright indecency-flat enough to suit the lowest taste. Who does not know papers in abundance, the editors of which get themselves up as the jokers of the community, making before their readers day after day and week after week the silliest attempts to be funny; endeavoring so far as they can call forth imitation, to reduce the English language itself to a Billingsgate level-giving a printed dignity to the common by-words and cant phrases of the bar-room, the street and the stable. Let the respectable portion of the reading community set their faces. against these insults to all decency and good taste. It is an insidious and far-reaching vice. It grows in boldness if let alone. He that reads endorses the shame, and so far encourages its continuance. There are left, in the midst of the polluted newspaper Sardis, some noble exceptions which have not defiled themselves with the reigning indecency. Let such be patronized. If the morbid and vulgar will have and read the filthy rags of Tamuz, let them have them in lonely glory. 1857.] He is not Lost, though Gone. 195 HE IS NOT LOST, THOUGH GONE. BY SAMUEL I. PRIME. It is clearly revealed that God employs the spirits whom he has made, to minister unto those whom he delights to tend with peculiar care. With the mode of angelic or spiritual intercourse, we are not acquainted. That disembodied spirits, the evil and the good, are permitted to reach our minds and exert a power on our spirits, is not to be doubted, though we may be unable to respond to that influence, and, at the moment of its communication, may be unconscious of its presence. "Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." And we believe, with many others, that if we were suddenly divested of this mortal, we should find ourselves in a vast amphitheatre, reaching to the throne of God, filled with spirits, the unseen witnesses with whom we are encompassed continually. There is a place where the Most High dwells in light that no man can approach, where the darkness of excessive brightness hangs over and around His throne, making Heaven, as Heaven is not elsewhere in the universe of God. But neither time nor place may with propriety be affirmed of spiritual existence. When Gabriel leaves his throne to execute the high behests of the Almighty, there is no intervening time or space between his departure and his presence, where his work is to be done. We use the terms that are adapted to our mode of existence, and are lost when we attempt to express the life of those whose nature is in another scale and order of beings than our own. It is, therefore, scriptural and rational to suppose that the spirits of our departed friends are around us by day and night; not away from God: his presence fills immensity; he is every where present. If an angel or the soul of a saint should take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, there to be with us or with those we love, even there the gracious presence of God would dwell, and the sanctified would find Heaven as blessed and glorious as in the temple of which the Lamb is the light. We must be near to one another, to see and be seen, to hear and be heard. Our bodily organs are of necessity restricted, and hence we have the impression that spirits must be bound by the same fetters. But this is an illusion that vanishes, when we reflect that speech, and sound, and sight, are attributes belonging to spirits only to accommodate us in our conception of communication with them. Thought is the language of the soul. Words are needed to convey that thought through the organs of the body to another soul. If there were no intervening body, I know not that the soul has any need of words. Sympathy is doubtless felt through all the spiritual world, without those channels of intelligence that we must open and explore. There is joy among the angels when a sinner repents, or a saint expires, long before the news is whispered from throne to throne, through the palaces of the skies. The thrill is more than electric. It is instant and every where in the empire of holy mind. If, then, there is such conscious sympathy among the spirits of the blest, who will deny that they, whose angels do always behold the face of the Father, are also conversant with those whom they have left on earth? The dead are with us and around us, and, though gone, are not lost. Wherever, in the world of spirits, God may have fixed the habitation of his throne, it is right to believe that his essential presence is every where, and his saints are where they can be the happiest, and best perform his high and holy will All this proceeds upon the doctrine, that the souls of infants do immediately pass into glory, when released from the prison of the flesh. This truth is too plainly taught in the Holy Scriptures, and is too firmly rooted in the human heart, to be doubted. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," was said by Him who said "Suffer little children to come unto me." The royal prophet evidently recognized this truth, when he comforted himself by the assurance that he should meet his child again. To me it has always been a delightful truth, that these little ones are, in great kindness, transplanted to a more congenial clime, and spared the ills that they must meet and buffet in a world of sin. So that I have often said, "I thank God when an infant dies." But this is gratitude felt only when the children of others die. Yet it is a blessed thought, that when one of our children dies in infancy, it sleeps in Jesus. We are sure of one in Heaven. The rest may grow up in sin, and die in sin, and be lost, but one is safe. Thanks to God, the lost is found, the dead is alive. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." "They ouly can be said to possess a child for ever, who have lost one in infancy." GOING ON STILL. BY THE EDITOR. As streams are hieing,- As leaves are dying,— As stars at break of day, As youths sweet smiling May So pass our lives away, As travelers weary, We go, we go, Though oftentimes dreary 1857.] Rev. Henry Antes. 197 REV. HENRY ANTES. BY THE EDITOR. "Der fromme Reformirte Mann aus Friederick Township." THE name of Henry Antes is very familiar to all who have pried to any extent into the less public annals of the first half of the last century. He was especially prominent in the religious movements of the day, and was widely and most favorably known among all religious denominations. Those who have seen his name most frequently referred to as "the pious and active German Reformed Layman of Frederick Township," may be surprised to see the title of the holy office attached to his name in our caption, and be ready to ask somewhat doubtingly, "Was Henry Antes also among the Prophets?" It is even so; and though this fact is less known, yet it is no less true, as in our history will appear, at the proper place. The early life of Mr. Antes, as well as the time of his arrival in this country, seems to be irrecoverably buried in the oblivious past. We know little of him previous to 1736, except that he is frequently and familiarly referred to as the pious Reformed layman and farmer of Frederick Township, then Philadelphia, but since 1784, Montgomery county. As his name does not appear on the lists of emigrants which began to be entered on the Colonial Records in 1727, he no doubt emigrated previous to that time. That extensive and beautiful region of country lying back of Pottstown, including the townships of Hanover and Frederick, formerly called Falkner Swamp, is a very old German settlement. Soon after the arrival, in 1682, of "about twenty families from high and low Germany, of religious, good people, who settled about Germantown," they were followed by others who "began to spread themselves farther back." We are also informed that "many came over from the Palatinate, and other parts of Germany, early in the eighteenth century, between 1700 and 1720,or '30."* Rev. George Michael Weiss, also, with a number of Reformed families, settled there, and built a log Church in the Autumn of 1727. Being a man of deep and earnest piety, Mr. Antes took a lively interest in the religious interests of the early German emigrants; and having been endowed with good talents, which he diligently cultivated by reading and study, his intelligence and excellency of inoral character gave him extensive influence among his German brethren in his day. Even as a layman his sound christian sense, his warm-hearted zeal and catholic spirit caused him to be known in other settlements than that in which he resided, and his influence was gratefully acknowledged among the German population throughout the Province, as well among the brethren of his own faith, as among well-disposed christians of other denominations. The shepherdless condition of the Germans in the infant German settlements especially touched his heart, and called forth his warm christian sympathies in their behalf. Though as yet neither licensed nor ordained *Day's His. Coll. of Penn., p. 4-2. 456. |