Excerpt from Report of the Proceedings of the Church Congress, Held in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, October 13th, 14th, and 15th, 1863 Congress for 18 63, the Committee thankfully acknowledge the great success which has attended what was confessedly an experiment. The two former meetings were held at Cambridge and Oxford, in the bosom of the ancient universities of the land, where Church men might assemble in full security. For while it was certain that the numbers of the clergy would largely preponderate, it was almost equally certain that the laymen who might attend would be for the most part either members of the universities, or under the in uence of their authority and traditions. But it was a bold step to pass from Oxford to Manchester, from the seat of learning to the centre of commerce, from those quiet resting places to a region of business and action, from the halls of the university to other halls where the doctrine of free trade is extended even to matters of religion. The ground, however, had been tried. The Manchester Church Defence Association, from their knowledge of the public feeling. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."