Special Issue
Yielding to the requests from many, many brethren the Gospel Guardian is preparing material for a "Special Issue" dealing with the current problems which have lately assumed such serious proportions in the brotherhood. It will be our purpose to make a purely objective analysis of the benevolent, evangelistic, and cooperational phases of church activity, setting forth New Testament teaching on each subject.
In addition to the regular Gospel Guardian staff, we hope to have some of the best known and best qualified preachers living help to make this "Special Issue" truly epochal. It will be at least 32 pages, and may run to 48.
Our target date for the Special is May 3 — just four months away. Our goal is a printing of 100,000 copies. We hope demand will be sufficient to justify our going many, many thousands beyond that. If a thousand congregations will each order 100 copies for distribution, and will send their orders NOW, we can cover the nation with this material. To make it possible for these papers to go into every Christian home in the land, we are setting a straight price of only 5 cents per copy — which is considerably less than the actual cost of printing.
We are hopeful that some congregations will order as many as a thousand; others may use five hundred; and there is scarcely a church in the land that can not use 100 — and for the trivial sum of $5.00. We are asking that you order NOW. Let us have some idea as to the number we will need to print.
As we get the material in hand, we will be giving you a more complete survey of it, telling who the writers are, and what particular subject material they are handling. This is going to be the sort of paper you will want to file, and to which you will turn again and again for study and reference. It is certain to make a tremendous contribution toward UNITY among God's people. It will not be in the nature of any "review" of any person or article; but rather an objective setting forth of Bible teaching as it relates to the modern work of the church.
Order NOW!!
— F. Y. T.
McGarvey's Unpublished Manuscript
It gives us a great deal of satisfaction to be able to bring to the reading public a hitherto unpublished series of sermons from the lath John W. McGarvey. These are "chapel addresses" which Brother McGarvey made to students in the College of the Bible in the school year 1910-1911, right at the end of his long and illustrious career.
For a long time it has been recognized that in the "second generation" of leaders in the Restoration, John W. McGarvey stood at the top of the list in his technical equipment as a Bible scholar. He commanded the respect not only of his own brethren, but of the scholarship of the world. Indeed, he was the acknowledged champion of that great company of able and scholarly men who met and defeated the forces of "modernism" in his generation. Even to this day, McGarvey's works are used as standard reference books in the leading universities of the nation.
These "chapel addresses" were found quite by chance in a box of old manuscripts by Mr. Robert M. Pierson, Librarian of Bosworth Memorial Library of the College of the Bible. Recognizing at once the great historical value of the documents, Mr. Pierson rescued them from obscurity (and probable destruction), and has collaborated with the Gospel Guardian in bringing them to publication.
There are altogether eighteen sermons or "addresses" as McGarvey called them. They are rich with the wisdom of eighty years, and have that delightful spicy humor which is a McGarvey trade-mark. They reveal hitherto unknown incidents from McGarvey's life, and show the great spirit of a man who had lived a life of constant controversy yet had not become one-sided or argumentative because of it. This book will make a priceless addition to every Christian's library. It had apparently been Brother McGarvey's intention to publish the addresses, as there are a number of corrections in the manuscript in his own handwriting. These changes and emendations are all incorporated in the book now being published, and it will be in the final form in which McGarvey evidently planned it.
The book, handsomely bound, will be a slender volume of about 100 pages, and will sell for $1.50. Prepublication price on it is $1.00. Publication release date has been set for March 1. All orders received up to that time will he honored at $1.00 each if the money accompanies the order.
— F. Y. T.