Suspension of the Quarterly.

Brethren, I am under the necessity of stating that with the present number I am compelled to suspend the Quarterly. This suspension grows wholly out of the fact that I have not the means to carry on the work longer. Whether, there­fore, it shall die here or be continued depends on what its friends may see fit do for the work. I am willing still to work for it, provided I am sufficiently encouraged to do so; but I am not willing to work for it as I have here­tofore done. With the exception of the second volume, my labor has been bestowed on it as a gratuity. This I propose now to quit. Hereafter, if I work for the Quarterly, it must pay me; other­wise I have written my last page for it. With six hundred more paying subscribers I can finish the present volume. With my brethren rests the issue.

Many have been the complaints that the Quarterly has been issued irregularly. The fact is admitted, and needs explanation. My support has not been derived from the Quarterly, but from preaching. My preaching has been done over a large section of country. This has kept me much from home. It has hence been simply impossible to write, receive, and return proof to my printer regularly. I have done all that was in my power.

Again: the Quarterly has not been what at the first I designed to make it. I wanted each number to contain one hundred and fifty pages, instead of one hundred and twelve. I hoped it would so far support me as to enable me to give almost my whole time to it. Could this have been the case, and could I have written a hundred pages of each number, I could have made the work what it has never been. This is what I would wish still to do; and what, with the countenance of my brethren, I am willing to do. But the issue now remains with them. The Quarterly ought to have five thousand subscribers. With this number I could make it sparkle like a gem, and achieve incalculable good. Never has so great a necessity existed for the work as at present. The great cause needs it; the brother­hood need it. Shall they have it? This question they, not I, must answer. If they decree that not through the Quarterly, then I still work on in some other way. [224]

[Volume V: April, 1868]

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