_To the Editor of the Baptist Magazine._
Observing in your Magazine for last month a notice of the annual sermon
to the Society for the Relief of the Widows of Protestant Dissenting
Ministers, as intended to be preached at Salters' Hall meeting-house,
Cannon-street, on Wednesday the 1st of April next, will you allow a
well-wisher to that institution to occupy a small part of your pages to
state a few particulars respecting that highly-valuable institution, as
I apprehend many of your readers are but little acquainted with its
origin and design. The proposed anniversary is the 102nd, it having been
established in the year 1733. It was founded on a broad and liberal
scale; no theological basis was intended; but the necessitous widows of
ministers of the denominations of Presbyterians, Independents, and
Baptists, were to be the recipients of its bounty. For these classes of
Protestant Dissenters it was their aim to provide; and as our ancestors
truly imagined that union was strength, their combined efforts were
exerted to form this society. It is, however, but justice to say that,
in the first instance, the interests of the society were greatly
promoted by the exertions of our Presbyterian friends. To Dr. Chandler,
a minister of that denomination, it was indebted for its rise. It has,
however, since that period, been liberally supported by the other
denominations of Dissenters, and diffused its blessings for more than a
century "to the fatherless and the widow." The annual sermon has been
preached alternately by a minister of each denomination; it was formerly
at the meeting-house in the Old Jewry, where the writer of this has
witnessed, with high satisfaction, a thronged assembly listening to the
urgent and sympathizing strains of a Fuller, a Hall, a Toller, and
various others of different denominations. In the present year it falls
to the Baptists to provide a place and a preacher; and may it not be
reasonably hoped that that denomination will give the meeting its
countenance and support, when they are informed that they have near
eighty widows in the English counties, who receive an annuity from its
funds, from one to twelve pounds each; besides more than twenty widows
in the principality of Wales, who receive from seven to nine pounds of
annual allowance.
How creditable, Mr. Editor, would it be to the dissenters to revive this
cause, which of late has been drooping! And the writer of this would
fain entertain a hope that, whilst exertions are making amongst the
friends of religion for so many important objects, ancient institutions
will not be overlooked and forgotten; but that a spirit of revival will
appear to the cause of the "widow and fatherless."
_Denmark Hill._ J. GUTTRIDGE.
*.* We understand that the whole amount of subscriptions to this
benevolent institution is under L120.
THE REV. L. S. E.'s PUBLICATION.
(COPY OF A LETTER ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND, A MEMBER OF THE ESTABLISHMENT.)
_To the Editor of the Baptist Magazine._