DELAY OF THE PRESENT NUMBER—EXPLANATION.


To My Subscribers.


Dear Brethren:—The present number of the Quarterly is greatly behind time. No one can regret this more than I; yet herein am I not to blame. You, no doubt, expect an explanation of the fact, and in this I deem you right. An apology I am sure you do not want; for this would imply some­thing wrong on my part, where nothing of the kind exists.

In December last I took cold, which settled on my lungs. In a short time I found myself fast confined to bed. For three months from that date I was not able to preach one discourse nor write one line for the Quarterly. Hence the present delay. With this I hope you will all consent to be satisfied.

Further: you will find the present number mostly filled by contributions from other hands than my own. I hope you will not deem it the less, but rather the more, valuable on that account. One main object in starting the Quarterly was to afford many of our more promising brethren an oppor­tunity of culti­vating themselves as writers. many of them, I well knew, possessed the power of long, well-sustained thought; while others were endowed with highly respectable critical ability. The cause we plead needs the aid of both these. To afford them full scope for develop­ment and education has been a constant object of the present work. I am gratified to know that much good has been done in this way. In time to come, I hope to be able to write much more for the work; though I am far from thinking it will from that cause be better. Many of my present contributors I now value so highly, that I would rather far read their pieces than my own. Hence I delight to give them space in these pages.

And now, dear brethren, I have a suggestion to make, which, I trust, will receive your warm and active sympathy. During my long sickness I could neither travel nor preach. Thereby I failed to get many sub­scribers, to whom other­wise I should to-day have been sending the Quarterly. Could I not, in view of all the facts, induce you to determine at once to aid me to run my sub­scription list up to at least two thousand names. It lacks one thousand of that number now. To our preachers especially is this appeal made. To no class of men among us is the Quarterly of so much service as to you. Has it not, then, some claims on your countenance and support? With even half an effort, if you will only make it unitedly, you can place the Quarterly, in six months, high above danger. Then I propose to make it still far more and far better than what it now is. Shall this appeal be enough? [224]

[Volume IV: April, 1867.]

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