"Copy" ; essays from an editor's drawer on religion

Prefatory Note

THIRD EDITION.

THE First Edition of this book was published in 1872. It comes to me quite as a surprise, that Mr. Whittaker, my friend and publisher, asks me for a word to introduce a new edition in 1885.

He tells me there is a continued demand for it, both in England and this country, and that the last thousand is exhausted.

I can but express my gratification that these gathered fragments of hasty editorial writing, in the old American Churchman and Church Journal, should have sufficient elements of vitality to be in demand after so many years.

I yield to my publisher's opinion and commit them again, entirely unaltered, with all their faults upon them, to the good nature of the friends they have made for themselves.

In the entirely other sphere of duty in which the writer is now, by Divine providence, occupied, it is not perhaps strange that he sometimes casts a wistful eye upon the days when the printer called for *^Copy," and these and other things were the response.

Hugh Miller Thompson.

Oxford, Miss., Feb., 1885.

Preface

'TT^HE Preface is always written last. It generally contains an excuse or an apology. The author blushes to find himself m print, and takes the last opportunity, before the leaves are stitched, to explain how he came to do violence to his innate modesty.

My publisher tells me he must have a preface. Therefore I write one.

I have no excuse or apology to offer for the book, i only mention this as an excuse for i\\Q preface.

An editor writes under spur. The printer cries '"copy," And " copy " must come. He has no time for careful elaboration.. — for the graces of rhetoric. His flights must necessarily be short. He is happy if he succeed in alighting on the spot he intended. The airy gracefulness of wing, the soaring stretch of pinion, belong to birds of another feather.

And yet the editor, if he is good for anything, is presumed to have something to say, and., in his own way, contrives to say it ; and in some respects his way has its advantages. He is under penalty to be at least readable, to be clear, and, best of all, to be short. We tolerate every-

IV Preface.

thing in him but boredom. We will allow the philosopher, the historian, the romance writer, the theologian, the poet, even the preacher, to bore us, — everybody, indeed, but the editor. We must concede that there is a certain advantage in this. It were well, perhaps, were the editorial necessity carried farther.

" But the editor writes for to-day. His productions wrap parcels on the morrow. They have served their purpose by appearing in the paper. They were ' copy ' for the printer; that, and nothing more."

Is this ^uiU true ? Does hasty writing necessarily imply hasty thinking.^ Is a thing worth saying once not worth saying twice ? Does not the modern periodical press necessarily deal with the very highest questions ? And while its speech upon them may not be elaborate and profound, may it not sometimes be clear and sensible, and level with ordinary capacities ?

There is possibly engaged in no other line of intellectual acdvity so much of power as is now employed in periodical literature. There is nowhere else so much variety of power. It is hard to say that what instructed, pleased, or influenced one set of readers, cannot instruct, please, or interest another set ; and that because thought found its first effect in the columns of a newspaper, it can find none in the pages of a book.

The writer believes these essays are worth putting in this present shape, or he would not have so put them. He

Preface. V

knows the limitations under which they wxre written, and their defects. But he knows also that though the expression w^as hasty, the thought was not so; that they were read and had their effect, and he believes they may be read and have their effect also in their present dress.

For years it has come to him as a part of his weekly w^ork to prepare a certain amount of "copy." He has collected some of it here, — those portions which were most frequently copied into papers religious and secular. He has arranged the papers in a sort of order which w411 be apparent to the reader. He has not sought for those which dealt especially with " Churchly," or even " religious " questions. His purpose was rather to collect papers which treated questions of common life and thought from a Christian point of view.

On those questions he confesses to hasty writing sometimes, when the call for " copy " was urgent. But he refuses

to plead guilty to hasty thinking.

H. M. T.

New York, May, 1872.

Contents

Religion for Men,

Is Christianity Weakness or Strength?

The West, . . .