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bers ; and also connecting with it meetings for religious discussion , and exercises similar in effect to those which this Society has adopted . The Fellowship Fund at York also embraced amongst its objects , at an early period of its existence , the formation of a Vestry Library . The one at Cirencester , which was established under the management of a late townsman , Mr . F . Horsfield , also added to its other objects the purchase and circulation of books : and the
Gravel-Pit Meeting at Hackney , agreeably , as they stated in their Report for the year 1820 , to another of the express objects of Fellowship Funds , provided books and pamphlets for the use of the members of the congregation in humble life ; and they express a hope that their successors Jn office will keep that object in view . Their successors obeyed the injunction , and in their Report for the following year , spoke iii high terms of the benefit which had been derived from
this department of their institution . The Fellowship Fund at Taunton has carried the plan of circulating tracts to a great extent , and the Committee , in connexion with this distribution , also hold meetings for religious conversation . This mode of appropriating a small part of
the funds appears to your Committee highly useful and perfectly compatible with the plan and rules of the Institution ; they mention it , not however in the way of proposition , but merely hint at it , to shew that there are still plans Open for further usefulness , and that they need not be weary of well-doing .
Meetings for religious conversation , and for communications respecting the progress of . Unitarian sentiments , have been added to the Fellowship Funds of a great number of congregations ; the instances of Lincoln and Taunton have
been mentioned . The Bristol congregation have long adopted them , and in their report for the year 1823 , speak in high terms of their utility , and state that they have essentially contributed to the promotion of congregational plans of usefulness .
The means employed by all the institutions to collect their respective funds are nearly alike , allowing the smallest contpibuttoii ( a ^ penny per week ) to couatittite the subscriber a member , and to give the contributor ft right to have a voice in the appropriation of the
Society ' s property . < The objects rof this Inutitution , as briefly stated in the rules , are " to give such occasional assistance as friay be wanted for Unitarian chapels , or Other buildings connected with them , bbout to be erected , repaired , or enlarged ; and to aid any institution now
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existing , or which may be hereafter formed , appearing to be calculated to support the cause of religious truth and liberty . ** But these are not the only benefits which have arisen from these institutions ; in many instances they have been the means of keeping together the scattered few whom similarity of
sentiment had joined ; in all , they have been found to aid the great cause of truth , and to draw iu closer compact and fellowship the Christian congregations which have adopted them . The plan and the objects are alike admirable , and it is with confidence that we call upon you for a continuance and an increase of your support to these combinations for good .
Whilst thus enumerating the advantages of these institutions , it is with regret that your Committee have to allude to a serious evil which has arisen out of their establishment — an evil which the generous mind of their originator never anticipated , and which , but for the
various lamentable proofs that have been given of its existence , would be doubted by all whose hearts lay a claim to liberal feeling , or whose hands were ever stretched forth to aid the progress of truth—an evil which , if not speedily checked , will either destroy altogether the institutions out of which it has
sprung , or materially impede the progress of the cause it is your wish to support , by limiting the means of its supporters . Your Committee refer to the mistaken notion , which has been adopted by many of the members of this and similar institutions , that the funds thus raised are to supply entirely all the aid formerly obtained from individual
subscriptions ; and that the small amount individually contributed to these funds is to exempt the contributors from those calls upon their liberality which it was once their pleasure and their pride speedily and liberally to answer , since the frequency of such calls evinced the progress of the sentiments they desired to forward . Your Committee earnestly recommend the friends of the Institution
to look at the founder ' s intent ; it was his object to raise a new class of subscribers , not to destroy an old and more efficient ^ because more opulent order of donors 5 his wish vwafe < -to' include the poor in his plan , and to induce them to aid the great work by the widow ' s mite and the poor man ' s gift , not to shield this rich from the usual demands on their
liberality , or to save their purses by the means of the less wealthy of their fellow-Christians . Such a view is at once injurious to the institutions we support , and to the cause we wish to aid ; and your Committee earnestly call upon the
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$ 94 Intelligence . — -Sheffield Fellowship Fund .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1828, page 794, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2566/page/66/
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