"And, Having Writ, Moves On. . "
"The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."
Nearly a thousand years have rolled into eternity since Omar Khayyam wrote those lines (he died in 1123 A.D.); but for every man who writes, or reads, their message is timeless. It was true when Khayyam wrote it; it was true three thousand years before that time, when Job had cried out, "Oh, that mine adversary had written a book!" And when the last trump shall sound, and all mankind shall be gathered before the judgment seat of Christ, the books shall be opened, and all shall be judged "out of those things which are written in the books, according to their works."
This places a grave responsibility, indeed, on all those who write. The books to be opened at the Judgment will have been written with ineradicable ink; the Book by which we seek even now to direct our lives has been written by men who were "moved by the Holy Spirit," and who wrote precisely what the Spirit wanted them to write. Libraries of the world are filled with the writings of men; and, beyond all question, the art of writing is the single greatest achievement of the human race. For this enables each generation to inherit the knowledge and insights, and to build upon the wisdom of all generations that went before it.
With this issue we close out Volume Twenty-Two of the Gospel Guardian. As gospel journals go, this organ is already an aged and venerable patriarch. It was first sent forth in 1935 as a monthly; suspended publication after about a year and a half, then came forth in 1938 under a new name, "The Bible Banner." For eleven years this publication continued on a monthly basis (with frequent lapses and omissions during the war years when the whole economy was disrupted by the conflict.) But starting in May, 1949, the paper reverted to its original name, "The Gospel Guardian," took on a green and inexperienced new editor, and changed to a weekly. We have not missed a single issue since that time. (Incidentally, the long-time editor of the Firm Foundation had a few slightly disdainful things to say about that time concerning "young editor Yater who is going to tell us how things ought to be done." Cled Wallace reminded Brother Showalter that the "young editor" was forty years old, and that most of his hair, what there was of it, was gray already!)
"Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it!" How awesome the thought. There is a sense in which a man's writings become a sort of immortality. At least, insofar as this earth is concerned. His laughter and tears, his brave deeds and bad mistakes, his successes and failures may be (to paraphrase Lincoln) "little noted nor long remembered" by the generations as they come and go. But his written words! Here we have the man himself, frozen in mid-action, pin-pointed and congealed for all time to come. And in the Gospel Guardian for this past third of a century we have preserved a most crucial and agonizing segment of the long history of God's people. Students and historians will be digging into the happenings of these years long after all of us who have been involved in them are gone and forgotten. For these past thirty five years have prepared the way for, and witnessed the first beginnings of, the Great Apostasy of the twentieth century. Its way was prepared, and its development made inevitable, by the weakening of respect for "Bible authority." Organized benevolence societies, centralized congregational cooperatives, increased fraternization with and recognition of denominationalism — these were not the problem. They were but symptoms and fruits of the real problem. Just as instrumental music and the missionary societies in the nineteenth century were symptoms rather than causes of the apostasy then.
How rapidly this New Apostasy will develop none can say. But that it will move much, much faster than did the nineteenth century defection is beyond question. Within twenty years it has already gone much farther than did the former in its first half century. But whether moving rapidly or slowly, the course is set; and is irreversible. And however it develops, by God's grace the Gospel Guardian will continue on the scene, under this editor and his successors, doing what can be done to uphold the banner of truth, and to "contend earnestly for the faith." We solicit your prayers, your interest, and your wholehearted participation in this great battle.
— F. Y. T.