BOSTON:

PERKINS & MARVIN, 114, WASHINGTON STREET.

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Reprint and digital file May 20, 2000.

This document was scanned from an original copy of the American Education Society’s Quarterly Register, which served as a digest of the diverse facets in American Education and its outflowing effects worldwide. The society was comprised of leading Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Princeton Alumni, and served to promote the work both in the U.S. and abroad for educating the people in the Reformation’s worldview of the Bible serving as the only infallible rule of life, which, of course, was the purpose for which these schools were founded.

THROUGH the goodness of God, we are enabled to bring the Fourth Volume of our work to a close. While we feel grateful to Him for the success with which our humble efforts have been attended, we take this opportunity to express our thanks to those gentlemen who have essentially aided us, by contributing articles for our pages, or by extending the circulation of the work.

We now enter upon our fifth volume with the expectation of rendering the publication still more worthy of patronage. We have made but a slight approximation to the idea, which we have in our minds, of the perfection to which such a work may be carried. The two great objects which we have had in view have lost nothing of their magnitude. One of these is the RECORD OF FACTS. We consider it to be of great importance that one publication should be a repository of such things as are worth recording, and transmitting for the benefit of future times. No other periodical in the Christian world is devoted to this object. Six or eight volumes—should the work be continued no longer—of well arranged and condensed facts on Education, Literary Institutions, Population and Resources of the United States and of other Christian countries, State of the Religious Denominations, Condition of the heathen world, and a History of the various efforts for the universal diffusion of Christianity, will be of inestimable value at the distance of centuries. Accurate and faithful recorders and chronologists are the benefactors of mankind. Polybius among theGreeks, Tacitus among the Romans, Sharon Turner among the historians of England, Thomas Prince, Abiel Holmes and Hezekiah Niles among American authors, will always be remembered with respect and gratitude.

The other object, which we also esteem to be of primary importance, is the DISCUSSION OF PRINCIPLES, or the examination of certain topics which lie at the foundation of all our efforts for meliorating the condition of the human race, and in which all denominations of Christians are alike interested. So far as it is in his power, the editor intends that the Register shall be a work for Christian America, and for the Christian world, bounded by no sect, nor river, nor territorial limit. Its results he would estimate, not by the accessions, which it brings to a denomination, but by the substantial benefits which it confers on human kind, and by the honors, which it gathers around the common Redeemer of our race. This high ground he may take without presumption, considering the character and ability of those who have contributed, and who will continue to contribute to the pages of the publication. Those subjects which pertain to the Christian ministry, will receive special attention. The union of literature and science, with elevated moral principle, will be always kept in view, in every discussion, and in the notices of all new publications.