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AN ADDRESS TO THE BISHOP OF CHESTER.

(FROM THE LAITY OF HIS DIOCESE.)

THE following address has been presented to the Lord Bishop of Chester by a number of the lay members of the Church of England in Bolton-le-Moors :

"TO THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER.

"We, the undersigned, members of St. George's congregation, and other inhabitants of Bolton and its neighbourhood, reasonably and firmly attached to the government, doctrine, and discipline of the Church of England, deeply deplore the attempts made, during several past years, by clerical and lay members of our communion, to raise agitation and to engender prejudice against the Reformation, and the scriptural truth, which, under God's blessing, then again began to spread its holy and life-giving power amongst the nations of Europe, enslaved by Romish superstitions, and blinded and deceived by Papal doctrines.

"As the present movement is only the revival of the evil spirit and false doctrines that, at former periods, agitated our Church, and then sunk to rest leaving her foundations still strong and unshaken, so we are sustained by the hope that God being gracious to us, our beloved Church shall also pass, uuharmed and unweakened, through her present fiery trial. Our adversaries reproach us with our distractions, but an apostle has assured us that there must be heresies amongst us, that they which are approved may be made manifest.

"Yet we cannot but mourn over those who, imbibing these revived opinions, have been bewitched into apostacy to Rome; and we cannot but feel alarmed lest the formalists and the inexperienced, the unlearned and the unstable, captivated by the plausible sounds of Catholicism and antiquity, and deceived by rigid adherence to lifeless forms, by ill-understood sacramental dogmas, and by the doctrines and traditions of men, should also be entangled in the net of the Roman fisherman.

"It affords us, therefore, the highest satisfaction, and gives us occasion to abound with many thanksgivings to the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that your Lordship, in the exercise of your Episcopal functions, regardless of the reproach of men, and strong in the testimony of a godly conscience, has shown to your clergy a noble example of devoted attachment to scriptural truth, and to the laity has given a renewed pledge and assurance of your watchful care and spiritual affection, by warning and exhorting against the pernicious opinions of Oxford Tractarianism.

"We do not thus address your Lordship as if you needed our praise, or required our encouragement: but when we see a member of our Church elevated to the conspicuous and responsible place occupied by your Lordship, and from thence, in the midst of trying times, contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints, we feel compelled to come forward and thus publicly to rally round

the battlements of our Zion, lest we should seem indifferent spectators to your Lordship's arduous struggle, wandering sheep of your numerous flock, or careless hearers of the word of God, and of his Christ.

"Invoking the blessing of the holy and undivided Trinity upon your high and holy calling, and upon your Lordship personally, and trusting that, through the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we shall meet in that glorious kingdom wherein agitation and contention, and that which maketh a lie, can never enter, we beg to subscribe our names hereto most dutifully and affectionately."

ASTONISHING ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE.

AN astonishing feature of the Word of God is, that, notwithstanding the time at which its compositions were written, and the multitud es of the topics to which it alludes, there is not one physical error-not one assertion or allusion disproved by the progress of modern science. None of those mistakes which the science of each succeeding age discovered in the books of the preceding; above all, none of those absurdities which modern astronomy indicates in such great numbers in the writings of the ancients-in their sacred codes-in their pbilosophy, and even in the finest pages of the fathers of the Churchnot one of these errors is to be found in any of our sacred books. Nothing there will ever contradict that which, after so many ages, the investigations of the learned world have been able to reveal to us on the state of our globe, or on that of the heavens. Peruse with care our scriptures from one end to the other, to find there such spots; and whilst you apply yourselves to this examination, remember that it is a book which speaks of everything, which describes nature, which recites its creation, which tells us of the water, of the atmosphere, of the mountains, of the animals, and of the plants. It is a book which teaches us the first revolutions of the world, and which also foretells its last. It recounts them in the circumstantial language of history, it extols them in the sublimest strains of poetry, and it chants them in the charms of glowing song. It is a book which is full of oriental rapture, elevation, variety, and boldness. It is a book which speaks of the heavenly and invisible world, whilst it also speaks of the earth and things visible. It is a book which nearly fifty writers, of every degree of cultivation, of every state, of every condition, and living through the course of fifteen hundred years, have concurred to make. It is a book which was written in the centre of Asia, in the sands of Arabia, and in the deserts of Judea; in the court of the temple of the Jews, in the music schools of the prophets of Bethel and Jericho, in the sumptuous palaces of Babylon, and on the idolatrous banks of Chebar; and, finally, in the centre of the Western civilization, in the midst of the Jews and of their ignorance, in the midst of polytheism and its idols, as also in the bosom of pantheism and its sad philosophy. It is a book

whose first writer had been forty years a pupil of the magicians of Egypt, in whose opinion the sun, the stars, and the elements were endowed with intelligence, re-acted on the elements, and governed the world by a perpetual alluvium. It is a book whose first writer preceded, by more than nine hundred years, the most ancient philosophers of ancient Greece and Asia-the Thaleses, and the Pythagorases, the Zalucuses, the Xenophons, and the Confuciuses. It is a book which carries its narrations even to the hierarchies of angelseven to the most distant epochs of the future, and the glorious scenes of the last day. Well: search among its fifty authors, search among its sixty-six books, its 1189 chapters, and its 31,713 verses, search for only one of those thousand errors which the ancients and the moderns committed when they speak of the heavens or of the earth— of their revolutions, of their elements; search-but you will find none. From the German of Gaussen.

THE KINDLY OFFICES OF CHRIST TO THE POOR.

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(FROM CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE.*)

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BEHOLD, then, our blessed Lord standing in the synagogue at Nazareth, with the book of the Law in his hands, and the eyes of the gazing multitude fastened upon him, and telling them that in Him they saw the fulfilment of that prophecy of Isaiah, which described the future offices of him, who should be the glory of the latter days and the salvation of all the ends of the earth. Hearken, then, you hear him say, for what gracious purposes the Spirit of God now rests upon him, and wherefore he is now anointed with this holy unction.— First, I am come to preach the gospel to the poor; I tell you not what I was, nay, what I am; because that would offend you : I tell you not of the glory which I had with the Father before all worlds were made; of earth's submission, and heaven's tribute, and the deep obeisance of the burning seraphim; but I tell you why I am now become lower than them all! I am come to let the poor know that there is mercy for them; to tell them that we, the Eternal Three in One, have looked upon their misery and lost estate; have seen how much they require to be comforted in their sorrows, and to have the assurance that, whether they awake the sympathies of their fellow men or not, they have awakened the compassion of the skies, and that God hath prepared a full redemption for his people. Moreover, I have not left it to angels or ministering spirits to announce this gracious purpose of Jehovah. The poor and friendless, the weak and the dejected, those who can boast but few friends on earth, and are tremblingly afraid that they have not yet made one in heaven, are the first, the nearest, the tenderest objects of my regard; and therefore I must bring them the glad tidings myself. I must tell

* A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel Moore, on behalf of the Widow's Friend Society.

them how the " High and Mighty One that inhabiteth eternity" treasures up all their tears; and that the pillars which sustain the universe would give way before one of those precious drops would perish. Come, then, ye who are poor in purse, but rich in faith, ye who are bankrupts in spirit, but have a mine of hope and promise laid up in heaven, hear why "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me," and whereunto I am anointed. I am come to tell you that you are highly favoured of the Lord; that if you are less exalted than some around you, yet you have not so far to fall: you need not envy those who feed on the highest mountains, I can tell you from experience, that the valley of humiliation affords the richest pasturage; that it is full and plenteous, and satisfies all the desires of the soul; the oil of gladness abounds in it; rivers of pardon flow through it; joy, and hope, and confidence, those trees of the Lord's planting, grow by its still and peaceful waters and should you be carried even to the very lowest depths of this valley, you will find the foot-prints of your Saviour there.

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'But much as I love the poor, I love "the broken-hearted" too; and the Spirit of the Lord is upon me," that I may come and heal them. Too well I know how sorrow found an entrance into the human heart it is the first-born of sin; and no sooner had the foul fiend effected an entrance for himself, than he dragged his wretched offspring after him; and there it has been ever since, neither age nor sex can escape its tyranny; the slumbers of infancy are broken by it; the hopes of youth are blasted by it; it writes care on the brow of manhood; and makes the hoar hairs of age turn grey before their time. And often do I drop the big tear of pity, when among my worshipping people I count so many broken hearts; when I hear one mourning in all the anguish of his soul over a rebellious child, and saying, "Would to God I had died for thee my son:" when I see another refusing to be comforted, because all that gave life a charm was gone, and desiring that henceforth he may be called Marah, because the Lord had "written bitter things against him;" when I see another writing bitter things against himself, thinking that God will despise the offering of his heart, because he can only bring it to him broken on the wheel of contrition, broken by the crush of over. whelming guilt, as if he had forgotten that these were the very hearts in which God would most love to dwell. However the Spirit of the Lord is upon me now, and I come to bind up these broken hearts. I am well qualified for my office; for sorrow has been my companion, and grief my nearest acquaintance for these thirty years; and know now for your comfort, that my power to relieve your troubles, is equal to my tenderness in feeling for them. Saw you, when the angry sea, rolling its huge waves against our little ship, made all my disciples tremble, how, the moment I raised my voice, all was bushed and calm and still? I have the same power over a sea of troubles ;" and the moment you find the dark billows of affliction tossing you from side to side, only come you to me as my disciples did, and I will lay my hand on your bleeding heart and say Peace, be still;" for even hereunto am I sent "to heal the broken-hearted."

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Furthermore it is a part of the office I have undertaken, 'to DECEMBER, 1843.

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preach deliverance to the captives"-many of you think you are not captives; you say, we be Abraham's seed, and never were in bondage to any man;" but I would have you to know that "to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.' Neither is this slavery the better but rather the worse because you cannot see your fetters. It has long been the artifice of Satan, to light up the prison-house of sin with such gay and glittering lamps, that you almost thought you were enjoying the pure air and liberty of the children of light. But fetters are fetters still, although they be made of gold; and whenever you attempt any spiritual service you will find them so. They will clog the spirit, whenever it would soar upward to the home of saints; they will pull you back, when you think of making one more effort to push open the straight gate of life; they will make you weary and faint, the moment you think of kneeling; and how will you feel their weight, when the soul has to force its way through the swellings of Jordan, and land on the shores of immortality? However, I am come for the express purpose of striking off these chains; but remember you must "choose you this day whom you will serve." On one side is your task-master, on the other is your deliverer; if you choose to cast in your lot with us, you shall find the blessing of God resting on all you have and do; if you continue in your present services, you shall find that sin has only one thing more bitter than itself, and that is, its recompense. Let me, then, break down the gates of brass, and "cut the bars of iron in sunder;" let me lead you forth from your spiritual captivity, into the glorious liberty of God's children. The moment you will make up your mind to leave all and follow me, Satan cannot detain you an instant, you are mine; I bought you; hell has no price to offer like that I paid for you. The cords of some old sin may draw you, and the fetters of some worldly habit may press upon you, but whenever I say, Let my people go that they may serve me," (and this I will say directly they will try to go themselves), all your chains shall be like tow touched by the consuming spark, and like the green withs of Delilah shall lie broken and unbound at your feet. Turn unto me, then, all ye "prisoners of hope," for the Spirit of the Lord is "that I may preach deliverance to the captives."

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But, perhaps, you will say, if Satan thus artfully conceals his chains, so that I cannot tell whether I am a prisoner or no, I shall never know when to avail myself of this promised deliverance. No you would not if I had been a deliverer only; but I am not so; I have come to show you your fetters, as well as to strike them off, which was what Isaiah meant, when he told you that I was to "preach the receiving of sight to the blind." Your badges of slavery were plain enough; but you had not eyes to see them. The god of this world had blinded you, and that with the worst form of blindness, the blindness of complacency, and pride, telling you that you could see as well as any one else. Now on all them who are blind, and who feel that they are so, and who are asking me to open their eyes, that "wondrous things out of my law" may be shewn to them—I have pity, and before long they shall recover their sight. I have appointed some friendly Ananias among my people, to speak to them, so that

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