[2] In the first issue Ryerson wrote: "we consider it our duty and feel it to be our vocation to devote our limited researches, talents and influence, to the high and holy interests of morality and religion – to the spiritual welfare of immortal and redeemed men."

He wrote incisively and with conviction, and was one of the driving forces in bringing about a union of Methodist churches to reduce the wastage of duplicate services.

During his long editorship the Christian Guardian became increasingly a mouthpiece for Dewart's orthodox opinions, out of touch with the more liberal views of the church.

[5] William Black Creighton, a Methodist minister from rural Ontario, became assistant editor of The Christian Guardian in 1900 after laryngitis forced him to stop preaching.

[1] During the election of 1836 Ephraim Evans, editor of the Christian Guardian, gave complete support to the government led by Sir Francis Bond Head.

As the official voice of Methodism in Upper Canada, the Guardian presented a view in sharp contrast to the calm rationalism of the Church of England.

It stated, "True religion does not consist in orthodox opinions, in the purest forms of divine worship, in correct moral conduct, or even in the combination of these things.

With whatever ability the word of life may be dispensed no sinner will be truly awakened, no heart will become broken and contrite, no polluted conscience will be purged from dead works, no impure mind will be sanctified, no human soul will be effectively renewed and comforted, unless the Holy Spirit descend in the plenitude of his love and power.

[14] The editor of the Guardian said, "Unless childhood is nurtured and trained, with the utmost solicitude and by all available means, the religion of Christ can never become universal, or permanently deep, fruitful, and progressive.

An angry correspondent wrote that in this theology "irresponsible infants are little more than germs of depravity, destined to blossom into sinners at the very outset of their conscious moral life.

Henry Flesher Bland said of Burwash's view, "A somewhat poor lookout for those who die in infancy, idiocy, and heathenism, none of whom can experience the new birth in the way conditioned by the Essayist.

[17] The doctor Anna Henry gave many examples in The Christian Guardian that supported her theory that surgery and medicine simply prepared the sick for true healing through the Word.

Christians were expected to be virtuous and healthy, and in the early 20th century both papers often described medical advances, warned against patent medicine and faith healing, raised the alarm over the spread of disease with articles like "Moslem Menace" and discussed the cleansing power of the Gospel.

Hare in which he wrote that the virtues of "pure citizenship" had to be taught to adolescent boys, so they could face a "carnival of nastiness, a miasma of unclean and malign influences, which attenuate the mind, pollute the imagination, and disintegrate the soul—all because they atrophy and paralyze the will.

"[19] Hare said that through honest sexual education a youth could have "his conception of his bodily powers changed from the vulgar to the holy, by sympathetic, scientific instruction, [such that] his craving for the unnatural could be brought under his will.

Chown surmised that the real object of the training was, "to furnish nice little satellites for Methodist ministers, women who will clasp their hands in admiration at the greater knowledge of the pastor...

"[21] The newspaper got involved in controversy when it reported the investigations into spiritualist phenomena of Sir Oliver Lodge of the Society for Psychical Research.

[23] A cautious editorial, impressed by Lodge's scientific credentials, praised his investigations into telepathy, automatic writing and the "Christian belief in man's survival of bodily death."

It concluded, "At least, it is a source of satisfaction to know that this whole question of spirit communications is not to be left in the hands of charlatans, but that men of the scientific temperament and undoubted honesty are giving careful and painstaking attention to it."