QUESTION: I have received a chain letter requesting me to offer the following prayer: "Oh Lord, Jesus Christ, we implore Thee, the all-eternal God, to have mercy upon all mankind, keep us from all sin by the precious blood, and take us all to be with Thee eternally, amen." Then follow these words, "This prayer was sent by Bishop Lawrence, recommending it to be rewritten and sent to nine other persons. They who will not rewrite it, will be afflicted by some misfortune. One person paid no attention to it, met with a dreadful accident." Then the promise is added that those who comply with the request "will on or after the ninth day experience great joy at Jerusalem during the Holy Feast, and be delivered from all calamities." What am I to do with it?
ANSWER: Do nothing. It evidently is the production of some malicious or unbalanced person, who has been for more than a year pestering the Christian public, and especially the good Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, who has repeatedly denied that he is its author. No one outside of an insane asylum would fanatically assume the ability to indict distress on those who refused to use in prayer this form, and to bestow joy on others.
— Steele's Answers p. 152, 153.
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