Excerpt from The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, Vol. 40: January, March, May, 1846

Forward as our march is, we tend now strongly to the study of the past. We love to stop in our course, to visit the tombs of our fathers and build monuments to the saints of our own and former ages. N ot to speak of the number of historical works printed and read among na, it is surpris ing that so many treatises upon sacred antiquity have been sent from our presses, and that the Christian Fathers are winning so much attention at our hands. Whatever may be the cause of this, - whether intellectual curiosity or sectarian strife, we cannot say, - it is evident that great questions now before our people must lead us to study anew the history of the Church, and come to a satisfactory conclusion concerning the men and the doctrines of the primitive ages.

Taking Christendom at large, it is obvious that within the last ten or fifteen years the study of the Christian Fathers has been revived in a remarkable manner. With out quite accepting the pseudo-prophet Miller's doctrine of a speedy end of the world, to be accompanied by a bodily resurrection of the saints, we may say that in one sense in our time the saints have already been raised; the souls of them that suffered for the witness of Jesus and the word of God have been seen and appreciated anew. Their spirit has been studied, while their works have been faith fully exhibited. No longer in their original voluminous manuscripts, nor in their former cumbrous folios, their thoughts now appear with all the aids of modern art, the more attractive garb of modern print and editing. Chry sostom and Augustine, subdued as was their pride, could not but have rejoiced, had they foreseen the honors paid them in this nineteenth century; and in view of the elegant octavos in which Paris and Oxford have enshrined their works, they would have bestowed no small benediction upon the memory of Dr. F anstus, and have broken the spell that has coupled his name with the prince of darkness.

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