The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-09-23 00:00:00

TESTIMONIAL TO THE REV. F. 13ISHOP

We extract from the London Inquirer the following
interesting correspondence on occasion of the presentation
of a testimonial, from the members of the Liverpool
Domestic Mission Society, to the Rev. Francis Bishop.
The testimonial consisted of a purse of two hundred
guineas, a silver inkstand, a writing.desk, and the sum of
ten pounds to be appropriated to the purchase of a remem-
brance to Mrs. Bishop

Liverpool, Aug. 29, 1856

. - .
DEAR MR. BISHOP.—A number of the members of the
Liverpool Domestic Mission Society desire the offerings
specified beneath to be regarded by you as some slight tokens
of the feelings with which they part from you as their minister
to the poor. They present them as their acknowledgment of
a debt which no gifts can cancel—as their expression of a sense
of a loss the magnitude of which has daily grown upon them
since first they were compelled to contemplate it. That loss
they always regarded as the greatest mistortune that could
befal them ; they now find it to be almost irreparable.
The qualities which command success in the great office you
have held are, in a large measure, the direct gift of God, and
such as cannot be produced by the most conscientious self-
discipline; and the place you have won for yourself in this
community, the recognition of your influence by our magistrate
and authorities as a beneficient power in the midst of us, a
successor, even though your successor was your fellow, cannot
hope to obtain until after long years of labour.
As your separation front us is now inevitable, and all our
earnest representations could not induce you to doubt that a
higher Counsel had shared your way, it is only left to us to
express oar entire confidence in the purity of your decision,
and to follow you into your new sphere with our prayer and
hopes that our common object, the presence and power of
Christ's Gospel with the lowiy, may in time become the gainer
through what we have lost—and that in your two-fold office
God may confer upon you the double blessing of being in your
own person more and more his minister of the poor, and of
ahaninc, beneath the force of your character men like yourself

fora work lit e your own.
Will you prmit us to add a word of gratitude, extorted
from us by your last report, in acknowledgment of what we
owe to the co-operation and self-denial in your own home,
without whi.th in so many touching cases you could not have
finished what you had begun, and we should all have lost the
encouincYcinent and high appeal to faith and to faithfulness
which those cases afford ?
Signed, on behalf of the Committee and ether members of
the Liverpool Domestic Mission Society,
W. J. LAMPORT, President,
E. HARVEY, Secretary,
(REPLY.)
Oak Bank, Harpurhey, Manchester,
6th September, 1856.
My Dear Sirs,—lt is with feelings too deep for ready
expression that I acknowledge the receipt of the generous and
substantial present you have forwarded me, from a number of
the members of the Liverpool Domestic Mission Society.
Such marks of kindness and tokens of sympathy add still
greater depth and intensity to the regrets which, in any cir_
cumstances, I must have experienced in separating myself from
a work that had for more than eight years enlisted my best
energies, and obtained a continually strengthening hold on all
my best feelings.
The great interest shown in the Liverpool Domestic Mission
by its friends and supporters, and the uniform kindness, indul-
gence, and active sympathy which I experienced at their hands,
strengthened and encouraged me under all the difficulties and
tria's that beset my path. I was never permitted to feel that
I stood alone. In a thousand ways I was continually reminded
that my work was appreciated, and that the one voice which
alone I could raise in my walks among the poor expressed the
feelings of many hearts.
In these circnmstances, I felt a growing satisfaction in
my work, and the desire of change was one that could
never have entered my mind. I should have been con-
tent to live and die in Liverpool; nor would it have been
possible for M 9 to entertain the thought of leaving the mission
there to take charge of any other similar mission elsewhere,
since I could never hope to have wider opportunities of useful-
ness as a minister to the poor, or more confiding and generous
support in my efforts to improve such opportunities than I
there enjoyed. But when it was pressed upon me that, by
taking part in conducting the Training Institution of the
Home Missionary Board, I might contribute to the supply of
a deeply felt want in our churches, and hope to exert a wider
influence in connection with domestic missions and kindred
societies, and when I was further assured that the committee
of the board, after looking iu vain in other directions, had
more than once returned with unanimity to me, I could no
longer resist,—the feelings of the heart had to give way to the
dictates of the head ; and however much I might fear that my
power of usefulness in the new field on which I am entering
had been overrated, I regarded it as a duty to respond to
the call thus made upon me, and give whatever help I may
be able to afford in this important and much-called-for

I rejoice to be assured that my motives are so well
understood and appreciated by the friends whom I have so

reluctantly left

The concluding paragraph of your letter is especially
gratifying to me. Whatever my feelings in regard to your too
kind expressions as to myself, I know that what you say there
is deserved, and that, had it not been for the strong and
confiding co-operation to which you make reference, some
of the moat striking and encouraging cases of reformation,
I have ever met with, could not have been effected. I
have much pleasure in enclosing for your perusal a letter I
have this morning received from the United States, written
by the person referred to in pp. 17.20 of my last report, by
which you will see that the confidence I entertained has aot
been misplaced.

Once more I express my gratitude to the members of the
Liverpool Domestic Mission Society for the munificent token
of their good wishes and esteem which they have presented to
me. That which is distinctive and durable of it, recording, as it
does, the more fluctuating portion of the gift, will always be
regarded by me as a cherished memorial of a most eventful and
hnppy period of my life ; and I shall hand it down to my chil-
dren with such injunctions as will lead them, in proportion as
they love their father, to value and preserve with the greatest
care that which to him was so dear and precious,—I am, my

.. . .
dear sirs, ever yours most truly, ..
(Signed) FRANCIS BISHOP.
To W. J, Lamport, and Enoch Harvey, Esqrs., President
and Secretary of the Liverpool Domestic Mission Society.

MILITARY FRAUDS IN DENMARK.—Extensive peculations
and embezzlements in the contracts for clothing and pro-
visioning the army have just been detected in Denmark.
Above sixty persons are supposed to be implicated in them,
including many respectable manufacturers and tradesmen,
with several government officials who held a high rank in
the civil or the military service. These frauds appear to
have been carried on most systematically for ten years past,
and it is asserted that not less than two millions and a half
of francs will cover the.amount which the government hat
lost by them. Contracts for meat are known to have
been made, by a dishonest collusion, at double the market
price,