CONDUCTED BY

PRINTED BY PERKINS & MARVIN.

1840.

The text of this and other superb works are available on-line from:

The Willison Politics and Philosophy Resource Center

http://willisoncenter.com/

Reprint and digital file December 9, 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.

Letter from Hon. John Quincy Adams

[ 6^th President of the United States, 1825-1829. Ed. ]

We have been kindly permitted to take a copy of a letter addressed by Mr. ADAMS to the officers of a literary society in Baltimore. It will be read with great interest, and is certainly a very admirable paper of its kind. Baltimore Chronicle.

Gentlemen :—I have no words to express my gratitude for the kind feelings and more than friendly estimate of my character contained in your letter of the 9th instant, and am not less at a loss for language to utter the humiliation of a deep conviction how little your panegyric has been deserved.

Were it even so far deserved that I could feel myself qualified to give you the advice which you desire, it would afford rue the most heartfelt pleasure to give it, but, situated in life as you represent yourselves to be, I could scarcely name any list of books, or of authors, which I could recommend as equally worthy of attention to you all. The first, and almost the only book, deserving such universal recommendation, is THE BIBLE,—and, in recommending that, I fear that some of you will think I am performing a superfluous, and others a very unnecessary office—yet such is my deliberate opinion. The Bible is the book, of all others, to be read at all ages, and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice or thrice through, and then to be laid aside but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters, every day, and never to be intermitted, unless by some overruling necessity.

This attentive and repeated reading of the Bible, in small portions every day, leads the mind to habitual meditation upon subjects of the highest interest to the welfare of the individual in this world, as well as to prepare him for that hereafter to which we are all destined. It furnishes rules of conduct for our conduct towards others in our social relations. In the commandments delivered from Sinai, in the inimitable sublimity of the Psalms and of the Prophets, in the profound and concentrated observations upon human life and manners embodied in the Proverbs of Solomon, in the philosophical allegory so beautifully set forth in the narrative of facts, whether real or imaginary, of the Book of Job, an active mind cannot peruse a single chapter and lay the book aside to think, and take it up again to-morrow, without finding in it advice for our own conduct, which we may turn to useful account in the progress of our daily pilgrimage upon earth; and when we pass from the Old Testament to the New, we meet at once a system of universal morality founded upon one precept of universal application, pointing us to peace and goodwill towards the whole race of man for this life, and to peace with God, and an ever-blessed existence hereafter.

My friends, if all or any of you have spiritual pastors to guide you in the paths of salvation, do not imagine that I am encroaching upon the field of their appropriate services. I speak as a man of the world to men of the world, and I say to you, Search the Scriptures! If ever you tire of them in seeking for a rule of faith and a standard of morals, search them as records of history. General and compendious history is one of the fountains of human knowledge to which you should all resort with steady and persevering pursuit. The Bible contains the only authentic introduction to the history of the world; and in storing your minds with the facts of this history, you will immediately perceive the need of assistance from geography and chronology. These assistances you may find in many of the Bibles published with commentaries, and you can have no difficulty in procuring them. Acquaint yourselves with the chronology and geography of the Bible; that will lead you to a general knowledge of chronology and of geography, ancient and modern, and these will open to you an inexhaustible fountain of knowledge respecting the globe which you inhabit, and respecting the race of men (its inhabitants) to which you yourselves belong. You may pursue these inquiries just so far as your time and inclination will permit. Give one hour of mental application, (for you must not read without thinking, or you will read to little purpose,) give an hour of joint leading and thought to the chronology, and one to the geography of the Bible, and, if it introduces you to too hard a study, stop there. Even for those two hours you will ever after read the Bible, and any other history, with more fruit—more intelligence—more satisfaction. But, if those two hours excite your curiosity, and tempt you to devote part of an hour every (lay for a year or years, to study thoroughly the chronology and geography of the Bible, it will not only lead you far deeper than you will otherwise ever penetrate into the knowledge of the book, but it will spread floods of light upon every step you shall ever afterwards take in acquiring the knowledge of profane history, and upon the local habitation of every tribe of man, and upon the name of every nation into which the children of Adam have been divided.

There are many other subsidiary studies to which you may devote more or less of time, for the express purpose of making your Bible reading more intelligible to you selves. It is a book which neither the most ignorant and weakest, nor the most learned and intelligent mind can read without improvement.

I remain your friend and fellow-student

for life, J. Q. ADAMS.

Messrs. LEWIS AUDOUN, H. D. McCulloch, and C. L. L. LEARY, a committee of the Franklin Association of Baltimore.