As we approach the end of the second volume of the Quarterly, we feel that we approach its crisis. If it can be handsomely sustained through the third volume, we confidently believe it may be looked upon as permanently established. Shall it, then, succeed or fail is now the question for decision. Its fate we soberly commit to the brotherhood. If it has real merit, on that ground alone we ask for it the countenance and support essential to its future existence; if it has not, we shall not lament its end. Three thousand subscribers would guarantee its success. With you, brethren, is left the question: Shall it have them, or shall it not?
In the providence of God we now seem near the end of our great national strife. In this strife, while we as a people have, on the whole, sustained ourselves well, we still have suffered much. It now, therefore, becomes every Christian man, in the noble spirit of the Master, to put forth his best effort to repair the injuries of the past, to improve the prospects of the present, and to push ahead the grand work in which we are engaged. In this labor the Quarterly would like to bear its part. It proposes to forget the bitterness of the past, to forgive as it asks to be forgiven, and magnanimously to work, in time to come, only for the honor of Christ and the good of frail humanity. The defense of the gospel in its purity, the union of all God’s children on the simple basis of the one Book, and determined opposition to every type of error, will constitute in the future, as they have in the past, the matter and burden of its pages. On these grounds and none others it asks the aid of those whose assistance it once more most earnestly craves.
In the next number of the work I hope to be able to announce to the brethren that I have returned to Kentucky, and to name the Post Office at which, for the future, I shall be so happy to receive their subscriptions and mail to them the Quarterly. My removal to Canada injured the circulation of the work some. But now shall the past be remembered no more, and the future alone absorb our thoughts and enlist our energies? We trust so.
Beloved brethren, is it going too far to ask you to procure for me 500 subscribers more to the present volume? How badly this number is needed I shall not say; but shall feel deeply obliged to you for the favor asked. A slight effort on the part of each person who sees this would accomplish the end. I entreat that the effort may be made. [336]
[Volume II: April 1865]
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