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ADVERTISEMENT.

OWENISM is the form in which the broken and scattered forces of Infidelity, not long since marshalled under the leadership of Taylor and Carlile, have rallied and found a temporary refuge and support. The degree of success which has attended on the efforts of its advocates, is owing, not more to the zeal they employ, than to the appeal they make to the deep dissatisfaction which exists among some of the working classes, against the religious opinions and institutions which prevail in society; a dissatisfaction which, arising in the main from actual religious corruptions, is nurtured and sustained by materials supplied from the works of Voltaire and Paine. Unhappily, such is the want of information in the mass of the people, that a self-confident and daring appeal to their passions and prejudices, their discontent and social discomforts, is sure of meeting with acceptance; and can, in many cases, hardly fail of divesting the mind of its religious impressions.

The following Lectures were prepared and delivered by the writer, in the hope of contributing some, however small, a means of checking the career of a system which, of all others, is, both in principle and in spirit, most hostile to religion. The aim has been, not merely to repel the attacks which Owenism has made, but to follow out one or two lines of the evidence on which the

religion of Jesus rests, and to present some views of it which appear to the author as acceptable to the intellect and the heart, as they are in unison with the teachings and the spirit of its divine founder. This remark is not to be understood as if the writer thought he had offered any thing in which the well-informed and cultivated Christian would discover novelty: it is enough for him if he has been able to present religion to the less informed, in a shape disencumbered of the repulsive dress in which it too commonly appears.

Nor does he profess to have exhausted any one of the topies of Christian truth on which he has written, for he considered it his duty to give a preference to those trains of thought and feeling which were least likely to encounter opposition, in the circumstances of the case.

There is a large and a most valuable class of persons-the teachers in our Sunday schools-who, by their position and connexions, are much exposed to the assaults of the partisans of Socialist infidelity, and whom it is of high importance to furnish with some means of self-defence. If any of them, and, indeed, any of our working population, should find suitable information in this small volume, the chief object of its author will be answered, and one of his highest wishes gratified.

Salford, February, 1839.

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