NONCONFORMISTS AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 10, 12 January 1881, Page 4

NONCONFORMISTS AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

At the late meeting at the Church Congress Leicester an address was presented from the Nonconformist ministers of Leicester. It was as follows:— " To the members of the Church Congress assembled at Leicester, September 28, 1880. Dear Brethren,— we, the Nonconformist ministers of Leices-

iter, embrace this tho earliest opportunity the rules of tlie Congress will allow, of giving you a hearty welcome ito pur town. Your presence atnbhg its, ahd in such imposing numbers, renders it .fitting that we should give public expression to our high appreciation of the noble examples of holy living and the earnest self-denying labors of so many Christian ministers. While it '■would be unmanly in us to affect to ignore- the points of .difference, both ecclesiastical and doctrinal;, which separate us ahd our CJhurchers from the great community to which you belong, yet the present is ah occassion of which we gladly avail ourselves for the profession of our sympathy and good-will, rather than for bringing our differences into prominence. We desire to acknowledge our obligation to you, as representing the Church of England, for the healthy stimulus wo have received from tiie lives of your many saints, confessors, and worthies. The illustrious names of Herbert and Ken, Leighton and Wilson, are as dear to us as to yourselves. Nor are we less indebted to your scholars, your theologians, your masters of sentences; for a, vast and instructive literature, for a thousand contributions to a right study of the Bible, and a clear apprehension of Christian truth. The works of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, of Pearson and Millman, of Lightfoot and Wescott, are all the delight and possession of the Nonconformist ministery as well as of your own. If our forms of worship vary from yours, yet your noble liturgy, enriched by the persistence, the trust, the sorrow, and the gladness of the saints of many ages, is for us, ho less than for bthers, a priceless treasure of devotion. Scarcely ever do we cone together to give thanks for the divine goodness without using those hymns which the singers of your Church have giveu the world, and side by side with Welsey, Walts, and Doddridge we place tbe solemn and beautiful melodies Heber, Lyfce, and ICeble. Your eloquent preachers, your seraphic doctors, your saintly examples have laid us under an immense obligation which we can never repay, and which we confess by uniting with them as we hear their voices calling us in the service of our Lord and Master. We trust that your visit to the town has been pleasant to yourselves, and will be full of advantage to the Church of Christ. There: is no Nonconformists in our midst who would not deplore as a great calamity any diminution of the religious efficiency of the. Church of England. We rather earnestly hope that your labours here will have for their result an increase of spiritual power such as shall be felt throughout the whole of your communion and throughout the country at ! large. We offer you our greetings in the spirit of that wise and comprehensive charity which is happily becoming more and more a distinctive note of the Churches of our time, well assured that all who seek to follow as disciples in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ and who labour with a single heart to bring in His glorious kingdom, are friends and allies, notwithstanding the different means they use and the different names by which they are called." The address was signed by 32 Nonconformist ministers of Leicester, OB»«l<Ml'.>»H>W."'»-'-'PJII_I.IUIIILIIJ l»i mt.