Foreign Intelligence.

FRANCE.

"

system. The natural comment of the public press is, that cases of ecstatic religious persons, every now and then exhibited by the Church of Rome, have found their natural explanation.

A LAMENTABLE DELUSION.

the chief editor of the Avenir de l'Aube, light seem equally to affect the nervous spoke thus recently at Estissac, near Troyes, in presence of many of his "freethinking readers : "The basis of true liberty, the liberty which emancipates the conscience and the life, is the Gospel. Without it, nothing is lasting, nothing is true, nothing is able to to raise and save a people. Jesus Christ, then, is our Saviour and our Master. Out of Him, we can do nothing. We must be converted, brethren, friends; we must acknowledge ourselves to be sinners and condemned; then shall we be delivered, and then only shall we be happy." What a contrast this with a professor in the Protestant Theological College in Paris striving to prove that David was probably no monotheist, but the worshipper of a Sphynx, "Ariel Doudoh"! A Parisian workman said, "There is Protestantism in the air;" let, then, Protestants preach Jesus to these acutely feeling and thirsting souls, or the deceived ones will turn aside, like a broken bow, and declare "all men are liars.”

MONASTIC TEACHERS.

The Municipal Council of Paris has voted a reduction to the minimum amount of the salary of friars and nuns engaged as schoolmasters and schoolmistresses (300fr. and 250fr. per annum respectively); and by another vote it places all the Paris schools in the hands of lay teachers. Many Protestant schools are communal-i.e., belong to the city of Parisaud the tendency is to place freethinking infidel Protestants over them. Great caution and firmness are called for. At the very moment when prejudices fade away, and the people turn towards us with outspread hands, shall we have no time to give them bread? God forbid !

PROFESSOR CHARCOT

is interesting the public intensely by his course of lectures, at the Salpétrière, on nervous maladies in connection with light and sound. Thus, by a projection of electric light upon the eyes of a patient, he produces the various phenomena of catalepsy. The limbs remain supple and retain the attitudes successively given to them by a third party, while the expression of the countenance varies ad infinitum according to the impression communicated by gestures. If the light be suddenly withdrawn, the patient falls into lethargy and somnambulism, during which unconscious acts, such as walking, writing, and sometimes answering questions, are performed at command. Analogous phenomena are produced by the patient sitting on a vibrating board, to which is attached a diapason of large size. In these cases sound and

We are deeply grieved that an insufficiently informed pen has set afloat, as an important item of news, the painful case of senile and mental delusion of one of the most modest and benignant of men. In an almost unknown street, a few people, a dozen or twenty, some from ignorance, some from watchful duty, some from deep compassion, and all with loving personal attachment to the man of eighty (whose quite, unostentatious charities, before, during, and after the siege, have ever been unbounded), meet and listen to his prayers and utterances. Some of these are sound and good; but when the jarring chord vibrates in his mind, they become incoherent and fatally false, for the point on which his brain reels is that he thinks he is a personal manifestation of Christ, the Son of God. There is no delusion too strange to be communicated to kindred temperaments. A few weak individuals here and there have been found believing this sickly dream. But the whole thing having been kept quiet, had long lost all public interest, and was sinking into oblivion-scarcely an ember remained,-when a correspondent in an English journal has taken up the subject, and of a last dying spark has make wildfire which is running the round of the papers in France and in England as a grand novelty, an awful blasphemy, a spreading heresy! The Protestants of Paris are surely the best judges of the wisest mode of dealing with one of their members on whom this great affliction has fallen; and the most judicious medical and pastoral advice has always been that the least possible ado should be made about the matter, that it should be allowed to wear itself out. Even when the venerated man has presented himself in a public prayer-meeting, of two perils the least has been judged to be that of not expelling him, and of allowing him to pray if he stood up. His mind has never (to our knowledge) wandered on these occasions, and as but few people know of his mental delusion, no notice has been taken. We believe this to be the strictly true and common-sense view of the case, and we regret more than we can express that we are forced by the indiscreet article in a con

temporary to mention facts which have caused untold sorrow to the family and the Church, which have been hitherto kept, as is usual in cases of mental malady, as far as possible in the background of a delicate privacy.

WEEK OF PRAYER: AFRICAN MISSIONS.

In some parts, and particularly in Nîmes, the Week of Prayer seems to have been attended with real blessing. In Paris the attendance was not very numerous, but the

LABOURS AMONG THE LOWLY.

[February 1, 1879.

Ordination in the Oratoire of two missionaries for Africa attracted a large audience and excited much interest on one of the evenings. Since then, the news has been received of the successful missionary journey of M. Coillard among tribes thus newly visited, and of the awful thunderstorm which prostrated a congregation in Morijah, when the lightning struck the little daughter of Eug. Cazalis dead in the church.

BELGIUM.

Large numbers of masons whose homes are in the district of Nivelles spend the week in Brussels, and herd together in logements, where they are visited from time to time by our Bible reader. These visits have already yielded fruit. Our agent is often heartily welcomed, and many of the men have purchased New Testaments or Bibles. Among the brickmakers also he finds access, gathering them together sometimes in the middle of the day for fifteen or twenty minutes to sing a hymn and to speak to them of the love of Christ. At one of these brickmakers' camps are two men who have been converted, and who are highly esteemed by their comrades.

At Morville, a small town near the French frontier, a station is in process of formation, and only needs an evangelist who can reside there in order to form a most hopeful field. Our Bible reader from Brussels and another from Charleroi go there on alternate Sundays, and hold meetings and visit among the people. During the summer and early autumn the services took place in the open air, as there is at present no room in which the people can assemble except one, far too low and too small, in a private house. It is intended to hire and fit up a barn for the purpose, for it would be sad to see so promising a work suffer for want of a locale. Among the most attentive hearers are two men, one of whom was an awful swearer and the other a drunkard. Both are now changed men, as all their friends are ready to testify. Among the persons present some time since, was a man who had walked five leagues (thirteen miles) in order to hear the Gospel. Tracts were given him at the time of the Franco-German War, and the reading of these led him to purchase a Bible, and thus he had been brought to embrace the truth. He has already been the means of one conversion.

at this entrance of Protestantism into a part of the country where it was quite unknown until within the last year or so. Our agent recounts a singular instance of their intolerance, leading, however, to happy results. "The sister of one of the people attending our services was about to be married, and asked her brother to be one of the witnesses. He objected, on the ground that his doing so would probably create difficulty. As his sister insisted, he yielded, and, after the civil ceremony had been performed at the mayor's, the party proceeded to the church. As soon as the priest saw our friend he went up to him and said, 'You cannot be a witness in this case.' 'Why?' 'Because your testimony has no longer any value in the eyes of the Church.' 'But, M. le Curé, I was one of the witnesses at the mairie.' The priest, in a great rage, ordered him to leave the church, adding that he should not allow him to put his name on the register. Our friend replied, 'I don't care a fig for your register, but the church is a public building, and I shall not leave until the ceremony is over.' This took place on the Saturday. On the following day the whole party came to our meeting."

Another of our agents, M. Ducart, of Frameries, writes as follows: "Last month I was called to visit a Roman Catholic family who have been reading the Bible for twenty years. The father came one day, through curiosity, to our service. He thought it was a kind of meeting presided over by a freethinker. The joy he felt was only equalled by his astonishment when he heard his muchloved Bible read and explained. The priest from H. has been calling on some of our families, and telling them that a church and a school are about to be built. This announcement did not produce the desired effect. The people said, 'It was not for the sake of playing a sort of comedy that we left The priests are, of course, greatly annoyed your Church, and we are fully determined not

THE PRIESTS AND THE PEOPLE.

FREE ITALIAN CHURCH.

The Osservatore Romano publishes a letter has been made Secretary of Briefs, from the Pope to the Archbishop of Cologne, vice Asquini, deceased. On this the corin which he says that from the commence- respondent of the Standard remarks: "All ment of his pontificate he desired peace the great offices at the Vatican are thus between princes, peoples, and the Church. held by the Liberal school of cardinals. He adds: "We have turned our thoughts The Secretary of Briefs is a very influential in preference towards the noble German officer. The Jesuit cardinals are alarmed nation, but God alone knows whether the and disgusted at this appointment." work is near being crowned with success." The Pope declares that he shall continue in the same path he has hitherto pursued, and he then makes an appeal to the German bishops, enjoining them to obey all laws that are not contrary to faith. His Holiness, in conclusion, says: "We must pray God to lead the noble and powerful Emperor of Germany, and the personages at his side, to show proofs of more disposition towards goodwill."

A PAPAL ENCYCLICAL.

The Pope has issued to all the bishops an Encyclical Letter, in which he discusses at great length the conditions of the Church, the Papacy, and society, much in the vein of his predecessor, Pius IX. The Latin text occupies seven columns of the Osservatore Romano.

THE PRESS AND THE PAPACY.

A new paper is about to be started, under the auspices of the Vatican, in seven different languages. The present clerical papers of Rome are simply roseate chronicles of everything concerning the Pope, and whoever happens to be one of the reigning ecclesiastical favourites. The Osservatore and Voce della Verità always take it for granted that the Vatican is a sealed tomb to everybody but themselves. Foreign correspondents have to run the gauntlet of a series of contradictions before facts which they have gleaned are recognized by these papers as even possible. Not a word appears in their columns about things really occurring in what may be described as the "Palace of Gossip." The revolt of the Swiss Guards, the return of Curci, the attempt to poison Leo XIII., the Minoccheri scandal, and everything else of any importance, were found out principally by English correspondents. Il Mondo Cattolico will, it is said, treat Roman Catholic subjects in a "liberal and unsectarian" spirit.

An interesting letter has been addressed to the friends in this country of the Free Italian Church by the Rev. J. R. McDougall. He states that the marked feature of the meeting of the General Assembly of the Church was the peace and concord that prevailed.

The

"All the reports given in," he goes M on to say, "showed progress. Shortly after that I presided in Rome at the solemn re-opening of the College of the Free Italian Church, with sixteen students, other three studying presently under one of our evangelists in the South. Thereafter I had a run to the extreme south of Italy, and spent ten days among the young native churches of Bari, Grumo, Mottola, Taranto, Rocco Imperiale, etc. I was greatly delighted with my visit. How white the fields are unto harvest, when once we have a number of able and devoted evangelists to send out! At Rocca 300 persons listened to me attentively for two hours, and among them were all the authorities and town councillors and heads of families. whole town is for the Gospel. The second meeting of the Intermissionary Conference, of which I am president, was held in my study two weeks ago. The various heads of Italian missions discussed a variety of subjects in a most brotherly way, lunched and dined with us, and in the evening we invited all the evangelists of Florence and other friends to salute the brethren of the Conference. Is not this progress ? You will be glad to hear that the Government, through its Ministry of Education, lately voted an annual grant of 300fr. to the schools in Rome of the Free Italian Church, and we hope their promise will soon be redeemed of granting recognition to the Free Italian Church as a moral corporation capable of holding funds and property in its own name and for evangelistic purposes. It was promised us at the re-opening of Parliament, but

that Signor Contini has been appointed by

Milan and labour in a distant quarter of the city. A room capable of holding 200 persons has been secured near the Porta Garibaldi, and here it is hoped that Signor C. will gather a good congregation and also a large Sunday-school. At Fara Novarese attempts have been made by Signor Borgia to hire a hall for public worship, but the priests were too strong for him. He has, however, arranged to hold occasional services in a room of a private house. Frequent visits to Fara Novarese, and much discussion in the newspapers, have rendered this step advisable. Indeed, there is much hope that a church will be formed here at no distant date.

GOULD MEMORIAL HOME AND SCHOOLS.

you will have noticed that a change of Ministry has taken place, which will cause the Evangelization Committee to come to delay. I preached and presided on Wednesday of last week in Genoa, at the ordination of a young minister for Cyprus, and took occasion to visit the church at Turin and to inspect the Desanctis Schools, now under our charge, and also to spend a day at Milan, where such an extension of our work has taken place that, notwithstanding the low state of our funds, we have been obliged to hire a second place of worship, in which I preached to 300 people. As one of a deputation of ten foreign residents in Florence, I had the pleasure lately of receiving the young King and Queen of Italy on their arrival at the station here, and also of conversing with them at the Pitti Palace on the following day. Nothing could exceed their frankness and courtesy. The Queen spoke to me in excellent English, without the slightest foreign accent. The King was greatly pleased when, in his own tongue, I informed him that I had had the pleasure, seventeen years ago, of similarly receiving his great father at the station when he paid his first visit to Florence as King of Italy; that every Lord'sday these twenty-one years we had prayed for the King, and now for the Queen of Italy, for their son and their advisers, and for the whole body of the people; and also that one of the first acts of his reign had been to affix his signature to the royal decree transferring the property in which we worshipped and dwelt to the Free Church of Scotland."

FREE CHURCH EVANGELIZATION.

The four agents in connection with this Church supported by the Evangelical Continental Society-Pastors Conti, in Rome; Borgia, in Milan; Logomarsino, in Florence; and Bracchetto, in Naples-report additions to their several churches. In Florence, the meetings in St. Jacopo are numerously attended, and in November last five natives and one foreigner were admitted to the Lord's Supper. In Rome several most interesting cases of conversion have occurred. In Milan, so great has been the success attending the labours of Signor Borgia in St. Simone Church,

There was a large gathering of English and American friends of the Gould Memorial Home and Schools in Rome, to witness the last distribution of prizes to the children for their year's work. This institution has now been one year in the new house, Villino No. 1, Via Magenta, to which it was removed from the centre of the city. The inmates, all of whom are orphan and destitute children of Italy, number forty boys and girls, and many applications have to be refused for want of room and funds. Ten girls and six boys have left the institution during the past year, several of whom have done the greatest credit to their training and education. The American Consul-General was to have taken the chair, but was unable. A letter containing a warm tribute of praise to the memory of the late Mrs. Gould, and enclosing a cheque from him, was read by the English Chaplain of Rome, who acted in his absence. The children recited both in Italian and French, and sang. After the speeches were over, and the prizes given, tea was served in the committee-room, where specimens of the boys' printing (in the Gould Home Press) and of the girls' needlework were exhibited. The excellent arrangements of the house, and the neatness and order of all the surroundings, were the subject of general remark and warm approval by the visitors.

GERMANY.

[From our own Correspondent.] Prussia, Jan. 16, 1879. APPOINTMENTS TO THE SUPREME CONSISTORY. I am able to begin my first letter in the new year with a fact which has caused great satisfaction in all religious circles. Two of

the Court Chaplains, Dr. Kögel and Dr. Baur, have been appointed members of the Supreme Consistory at Berlin. The importance of the fact is equally recognized by friends and foes. Your readers will remember that it was said a few months ago that Dr. Falk was to retire