We are confident that Freethinkers generally will appreciate the disinterested zeal of Mr. R. A. Cooper in making all arrangements necessary to ensure that the Bishop’s Discourses should be fitly answered on the spot and without delay.
SIR,—I am about to ask your kind help in an enterprise undertaken for the religious welfare of our fellow-citizens, to the success of which your co-operation may very materially contribute. It has been thought that in large cities, where sceptical views are often so much disseminated, and spread so widely among all classes, good might be done, under God’s blessing, by an annual series of discourses from some competent preacher, directed against modern forms of infidelity, and afterwards published and circulated at so low a price as should put them within the reach of all. It is chiefly with the view of holding such discourses there, that the Dean and Chapter have recently caused the Nave of the Cathedral Church to be lighted and furnished with chairs, _all of which_ (except, a very few reserved for persons engaged in the service, or connected with the Cathedral) _will be perfectly free_. With the view of giving the preachers a larger discretion as to time, and of making the whole service shorter, it is proposed to use before the sermon the Litany only with one or two hymns. I may add that the whole scheme has the thorough sanction and concurrence of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese, who has been consulted on every part of it.
_The Lord Bishop of Peterborough has kindly undertaken to give the first series of discourses on Tuesday_, _the_ 21_st_, _Tuesday_, _the_ 28_th_, _Wednesday_, _the_ 29_th_, _and Thursday_, _the_ 30_th_ _of March_, _the service each evening commencing at_ 8 _p.m._
If you approve of our scheme (and pray observe that _the discourses_, _having for their object the vindication and establishment of the Christian faith_, _will in all probability hardly notice the points on which Christians of various Communions differ_), will you kindly help us, first, by making known among your workpeople or parishioners the days and hours of the services, with the name of the preacher, and encouraging them to attend; secondly, by circulating among them the discourses, when published, of which I shall be greatly pleased to send you as large a number as you think you can dispose of? On this last point I shall be obliged by a communication from you.