free institutions. In Belgium the principles of '89 seem conquered; for the Church has conquered. In Italy the danger is so great that the national government feels bound to make an ally of the empires of the North. If the liberalism of the day is to be conquered, it is because it has not comprehended the great role of religion, even in our day. And, nevertheless, see how the question presents itself to the house and hearth of each one of us, not less than to the State. You are perhaps indifferent to the Church, you may even be hostile to it, but your wife and children remain faithful to it; you are thus conquered in advance. If, on the contrary, you wish to withdraw your family from the school and all Christian worship, your defeat is still more certain, for you will collide with the fact that man is a "religious animal," that he needs a religion, and that he will return to his ancient altars if you offer him no others. What is the conclusion that forces itself on all good patriots, and which they are preaching without cessation? It is this: If you would establish liberty, abandon the Church and the worship that anathematize it, and embrace that one which consecrates it. These are views of Laveleye, born a Catholic, in a Catholic land, but whose wary eyes have been opened to the gravity of the situation, and who meets it not as a Christian, if you please, but as a common sense champion of the rights of God and of man. The defeat of Liberalism in Belgium, and the relegation of the secular schools to the hands and teachings of the priests, have been a sore and dangerous blow to true liberty, and the lesson may well be heeded in France and-nearer home.

IN ITALY the Churches of the Vaudois are sacred to their mission of spreading and nurturing the Protestant religion. They are now expressing a great deal of sympathy for their French brothers in distress, and have just sent to them a touching greeting and appeal, rising entirely above the present hostility and coolness between the nations. They say in this: "Brothers of France, count on our sympathy in these days of trial for your most sacred liberties. When we listen to the eternal quarrel between the countries, many of the Vaudois would gladly interfere and say to France, A truce to all recriminations! it is on us alone that ought to rest the debt we owe. Our sincere attachment to our king and country will never prevent us from acknowledging that the two heroic ages of our history were determined by the Frenchmen, Valdo and Colvin. We shall never forget that our Bible was translated by a Frenchman, Olivétan, and that the captain of our glorious liberty was a Frenchman, Henri Arnaud.”

"And then is not our confession of faith still Gallican?" say these grateful Vaudois. The use of the French tongue among them still recalls their origin, and their family names remind them of their duty to France, and thus they would still fraternize in spite of all the hard words and rash deeds that are now rampant between them. Another object of this

Epistle to French Protestants" was to announce the mournful news of the death at Florence of their beloved teacher and preacher, M. A. Revel, who died in his prime, being but fifty-eight years old. They had

become accustomed to think him absolutely necessary to them, and mourn his loss as did the disciples that of their divine Master with his living word.

IN GERMANY the Evangelical Alliance is at last gaining quite a popular foothold, and now the annual week of prayer is also observed with considerable unanimity. It is true that a goodly number of churches of the old school are still refractory, but the number of these unbelieving Thomases is diminishing yearly, and this year in particular they can report quite an increased number of those who participate in these valuable reunions of the different creeds and Churches. The laity have not yet gained their spiritual majority, and still leave all the work to the pastors; but the constant effort of these leaders to bring their flocks into the work will soon show an effect. The preachers, therefore, see in these assemblages great profit, and much hope for the future.

The Protestant Churches of the Fatherland are still greatly exercised at the intolerance of the Czar in regard to the Lutheran Churches of the Baltic provinces, and have called attention to this persecution during the week of prayer. Numerous pastors rudely exiled from their parishes are wandering in Germany in quest of occupation. If this crushing system continues much longer the emigration threatens to become general. There is great feeling excited in the case of a popular and beloved divine of St. Petersburg, a man eminently endowed, pious as well as learned, who prepared for his profession under the leading teachers of Germany. A Russian painter of great talent, moved by his teachings, sought admission to his communion. Now, according to the tenor of Russian legislation, every member of the Orthodox Church who abjures his faith, and every pastor, Protestant or otherwise, who favors this abjuration, is liable the first year to prison or exile, and the second year to transportation to Siberia. The conscience of said divine leaving him no respite, he finished by sacrificing the human law to the divine law. He announced the fact to the competent ecclesiastical authorities, and set out immediately for Germany. At the frontier he was arrested, taken back to St. Petersburg, and given over to the civil authorities. This was too much for a constitution as delicate as his; he passed into a state of serious mental alienation, and was turned over to the hands of specialists for treatment. To this fact he will doubtless owe his escape from Siberia, but one's blood. boils at the recital of such barbarity, which smacks of the Inquisition.

THE COURT PREACHER of the German empire is still the target for many evil-minded marksmen. These go now so far as to accuse him of being a traitor to his country, and try to make out that Stoecker is playing the part of an ecclesiastical Boulanger, which, from the German standpoint, is about as hard a thing as can be said about him. But Stoecker holds his ground with the masses, and his popular sermons on Sunday, scattered every-where for a farthing a piece, in thousands of copies are bringing to him an immense hearing; the cabmen on their stands on the 29-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. V.

Sabbath buy and read them in all quarters; and so do all of the laboring population whose occupation gives them leisure moments. It can safely be affirmed, that since this champion has been the leader of the home mission work the religious physiognomy of the metropolis has greatly changed.

It will be well, therefore, to distrust the canards of the press, which likes to strike a shining mark. Foreign journals are accustomed to gain most of their information about religious matters from the press of Berlin, which is largely in the hands of Jewish capitalists, and ever ready to strike the court chaplain because of his excessive anti-Semitic tendencies-for they of course ignore the first word of the religious movement in Germany. It can be safely asserted that the great majority of German Christians will always be on the side of Stoecker against his adversaries. This is, of course, not enough to justify his undeniable errors, but it is assuredly enough to establish his perfect honesty. The government still turns a deaf ear to the appeals of the Protestant Church. And already the zeal manifested by a large fraction of the Church for a more real independence of the State seems to have entered into a period of calmness, and the petitions of the provincial synods will wait a long time for realization. At present it is the question of sabbath observance that is subjected to the honor of a first-class funeral. A few weeks ago it was whispered that the plan of the ministry was to be submitted very soon to the Chambers. But, at a hint from above, all these rumors have been belied. This unfortunate project sleeps therefore the sleep of the just in the portfolios of the ministry.

The general impression is that the monarch favors laws for sabbath observance, for he lately expressed the desire that horse-races might no longer be held on the sabbath, and they have, of course, ceased so to be. This is a proof that he is not backward in manifesting his religious convictions. He showed this also recently by giving from his private purse quite a considerable sum for the erection of a building for the Young Men's Christian Association. These desirable establishments for the young are becoming in Germany at last the nurseries for future generations, and are now enjoying a rapid development. They will assuredly do more toward realizing the independence of the Church, for which believers are sighing, than any other agency, and than all the votes of a parliament more desirous of reducing than of increasing the budget for the expenses of public worship. Germany may well greet the day when her war-song will be a hymn of peace.

THE MAC ALL movement in France still goes on its triumphant way. In the street of Saint Denis, near a large and popular restaurant, arises a building whose façade is ornamented with wooden figures that are known as the statues of Saint Jacques, formerly the sign of a large drygoods store. To this the people have been accustomed to throng, and thither they go now in quest of other food. The hall is very large, and as it was formerly the chapel of the convent of Saint Jacques it was

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not difficult to restore to it the appearance of a place of public worship. The auditorium will contain about five hundred seats, and many more can find standing room. The intent of this edifice is as follows: Very recently the Mac All Mission has been induced, in the interest of new converts, to have an understanding with the different churches to establish annexes or new congregations. It is thus that the mission of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle has become an annex of the Reformed Church of Pastor Fish.

Another local mission is supported partly by the Mac All Mission and the Baptist missionary from the United States. Sunday morning is given in this way to a popular service under the auspices of the Baptists. The pastor of this new church has the pleasure of ministering almost entirely to a congregation that he himself has been instrumental in leading to the faith. The first service was opened by Mac All himself before an audience of one hundred and fifty persons. He read the Bible and offered the first prayer to God ever uttered in the edifice in all its history. The new pastor then took the stand and laid out the programme that he and his friends proposed to follow, declaring that the new home was a new weapon for war against the common enemy, in which all his members were to be soldiers. His word of command is, "Charity to all, and principally to other Christians." He rendered homage to the liberal Christianity of Mac All, who seems to know how to hold an even balance among the different Churches, and also knows how to accept the co operation of all Christians, be they who they may.

II. LITERARY.

LA REVUE CHRÉTIENNE, the well-known organ of the Reformed Protestant Church of France, has just entered on its thirty-sixth year of activity and usefulness. It remains loyal to its early device, “Gospel and Liberty;" and it demands no greater honor than to show itself worthy of this glorious banner. It affirms that to-day, as in the days of his terrestrial life, Christ alone can answer the questions that so profoundly agitate human society. Therefore no cause is dearer to it than that of civil liberty, whose triumph alone can assure that of the Gospel. This is enough, we think, to recommend such a publication to the attention of Christians as well as of all men who know how to comprehend the value and importance of religion. The Revue gives the first place to the study of religious problems, but it also follows the movement of ideas with the largest sympathy, and excludes nothing from its attention. History, and the sciences, and travel, literary and artistic criticism, questions of political economy, as well as all charitable problems, are alike the objects of its study and regard; but these are all controlled by the thought that, Christianity being the truth, it is to illumine every thing with its powerful light. The Revue gives also to the literature of the imagination the place that it has a right to demand in creating a wholesome literature that

leaves behind it nothing but touching and beneficent impressions. It has thus become a power among the loyal members of its Church, and its editors and contributors are among the best known writers of French Protestantism who are now struggling with the spirit of evil abroad in their country.

FRENCH LITERATURE of the period is strangely diversified with great good and great evil. That of the stage seems to grow in shameful immorality, notwithstanding the effort of many good men to bridle the foul pen. To judge of it by the daily accounts of the secular press, its licentiousness passes all bounds. One blushes to think that men dare to present such moral filth before a mixed audience of both sexes. It was hoped that the dramatic critic-Jules Lemaitre-would contribute to raise a dam against this lamentable deluge; but his criticism, so charming and so delicate in his earlier efforts, in his growing desire to amuse has thrown off the fig-leaves and given itself up to passion.

A new book by Edouard Rod, entitled The Sense of Life, is an interesting effort to break the narrow circle of egotistical impressionism which finally ends in morose sadness. The author has treated his subject in an autobiographical form similar to that of the famous Truth and Fiction of Goethe, which lends it an accent of reality that makes it impressionable, but increases its tendency to pessimism.

Francis de Pressensé is out with a new book entitled Ireland and England, Since their Union to our Day. The author says in the preface that it is but an historical essay; but the tendency of the Gaul to favor the Celt is obvious in the confession that though he began his subject with a feeling of favor toward the English he ends it with perfect sympathy with the Irish in their demand for Home Rule. The French have always a deep vein of sympathy with the Irish, and the respective nations in the course of history have stood by each other in their trials and struggles.

Renan has just published the second volume of his History of Israel, full of critical and poetic fancy, but with the evident malice prepense to degrade as much as possible the grand figure of ancient Israel. He has thought it well once again to announce the essential article of his faith; namely, that neither in individual nor general history, any more than in nature, is there a trace of the intervention of a superior will!

Protestant literature has been greatly enriched by the interesting biography of Philippe-Albert Stapfer, one of the venerable patriarchs of French Protestantism, which he honored with his vast knowledge and elevated by his noble intellect. He was the friend of Vinet, and firm Nothing can be more interesting than and Talleyrand.

and liberal in State as in Church. his relations with the First Consul

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FRENCH SWITZERLAND has given us of late several books of superior interest. One of these is a collection of notes entitled: Pastors and Laymen of the Genevan Church in the Nineteenth Century." Chaponnière, the author, is the editor of the noted religious journal of his section