On the second page of the cover of Number 4, issued March 4, 1841, an endeavor to establish _The Offering_ permanently was announced. “Be the number large or small who are disposed to patronize the undertaking, we have concluded to hazard the experiment for one year,” the labor and responsibility being wholly my own. If my ecclesiastical connections had been of the popular order, there could have been no doubt of success; but I was well known as a Universalist. Sectarian hostility, in that day, was of a sort which would not be tolerated now; and I had to combat the falsehood that _The Offering_ was a Universalist publication. _The Operatives’ Magazine_ was issued as a rival, or competitor; and only the superior talent of the contributors to the original work kept it in the ascendant of repute and circulation. I am happy, too, to remember that the most influential laymen in the city indorsed my enterprise, as will appear by the following card:-- LOWELL, _March 7, 1841_. The undersigned have seen the numbers of _The Lowell Offering_ already issued. Believing the work calculated to do good, and understanding that it is to be permanently established by means of a subscription list, we take pleasure in recommending it to the patronage of the public generally, and to persons connected with the manufacturing establishment especially. Elisha Huntington. J. P. Jewett. Samuel Lawrence. Samuel W. Stickney. Elisha Bartlett. Daniel Mowe. J. W. Warren. S. D. York. Gilman Kimball. William Grey. Robert Means. Moody Currier. B. F. French. C. Appleton. J. C. Dalton. John Nesmith. John W. Graves. George Mansfield. Homer Bartlett. George Brownell. Charles L. Tilden. James G. Carney. John Aiken. W. O. Bartlett. Alexander Wright. A. D. Dearborne. George Motley. Hiram Parker. John Avery. Nathaniel Thurston. William Spencer. Eliphalet Case. William Livingston. J. G. Abbott. J. W. Scribner. John Clark.