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1858.]

Religious Intelligence.

burg for all time to come, as pure and
unchangeable Christianity. In the elec-
torate of Hesse, a friend of Dr. Vilmar,
well known as one of the ablest and most
Romanizing High-Churchmen of Germa-
ny, has been appointed one of the three
superintendents-general of the Church;
but the professors of theology at Marburg
who are Low-Church, have brought a
law-suit against Dr. Vilmar, who is now
their colleague, for having slandered and
defamed them in an anonymous pamphlet
written for electioneering purposes. In
Austria nothing is heard of the promised
reorganization of the Hungarian Church,
though nearly a year has elapsed since
all the Protestant Synods expressed a de-
sire that a General Synod be called in
order to decide, as the only competent
authority, on the adoption or rejection
of the proposals of the government. In
Tyrol a Protestant mining society has
received, after long negotiations, the right
of buying property, but the official Gazette
of Vienna remarks that this concession
has been only made in order to give to
the poor population a better opportunity
for gaining their livelihood, and that a
general inference, with regard to the right
of non-Catholics to buy property in Tyrol,
must not be drawn from it. As a conces-
sion of greater importance, we consider a
recent decree of the Ministry of Public
Worship, according to which the accounts
of the Protestant Churches will no longer
be revised by the government, but only
by the proper ecclesiastical board.

The Roman Church. - Notwithstanding the extraordinary favors which the Roman Church continues to receive from the government of Austria, she is far from being satisfied with the progress of her influence on the people. The whole Catholic population of Austria, amounting to over thirty millions, contributed last year no more than about sixty thousand dollars for Foreign Missions. Nearly each one of the few Catholic organs of Austria has been crippled by the new press laws which have gone into effect on the first of January of the present year, while the anti-Catholic press and literature enjoys, notwithstanding all the gagging, an exuberant growth. The king of Bavaria is again accused of appointing bishops of As the Catholic doubtful orthodoxy.

press of Germany is not permitted to
speak on such subjects, the grievances
of the ultramontane party are made pub-
lic through the columns of the Univers of
Paris, which, ex. gr., brought recently a

thundering article against the candidate nominated by the king for the vacant see of Regensburg. He was accused of living on friendly terms with the family of an uncle who had turned Protestant. But though the opinion of the Univers is not without influence in Rome, the charge was this time not considered sufficient to withhold his ratification, and the obnoxious candidate has, at present, entered upon his episcopal duties. From Prussia, Wirtemberg, and Baden, it is reported that the teachers of the public schools, though they are educated at the expense of the state, and receive from the state their salaries, are becoming too docile to the instruction of the Church. In Wirtemburg they refuse to meet with Protestant colleagues in common teacher's confer

ences.

In Prussia a Conference has excluded a member because he has a Protestant wife; and in Baden one teacher has declared to the superintendent of the state, that he holds himself subject to the orders of the Church, but not to those of the state. In Wirtemberg the University of Tubingen has excluded the Faculty of Catholic Theology, because, by the new concordat, it is wholly placed under the superintendence of the bishop; the government, however, has annulled this resolution. In the Duchy of Nassau, of whose population (432,039 in 1856) nearly one half is Catholic, the ultramontane party has obtained an unusual success, its candidates for both branches of the Legislature being elected in all the purely Catholic and in most of the mixed districts.

SWITZERLAND.

The Protestant Churches.-The Federal Government continues to order the marching of troops on Sundays. After the example of the Protestant Synod of Berne, the Catholic cantons of Fribourg and Unterwalden have protested against it, though likewise without result. The GovConference of Reformed Church vernments, for effecting a closer connection between the hitherto independent Churches of the various cantons, was to meet in Zurich toward the close of April. The same subject will be discussed by the next General Assembly of the Reformed Swiss clergy at Aarau. A circular of the committee points to the importance of this question, at a time when the Roman Church is successful also in Switzerland in re-establishing among its members a In Zurich Dr. Volckcompacter unity.

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who, in a work destined for the people, has repeated the views of Dr. Strauss and his friends on the New Testament, has been appointed, by the Grand Council, Extraordinary Professor in the Theological Faculty. The majority of the Church Council of Zurich have declared themselves opposed to the promotion of Dr. Volckmar, on account of the bold hypotheses" contained in his book; but as Volckmar has had the right of lecturing before, and as it is only a title, without salary, which it is intended to confer on him, the Church Council has unanimously agreed to desist from further opposition for the present. The Church papers of the Reformed Church complain of the activity of the independent Churches, as the Methodists, Irvingites, and others, and in several places their meetings had been forbidden.

The Roman Church.-The Bishop of St. Gall has addressed a memorial to the Grand Council of the canton, in which he demands that a law of 1855, establishing a common cantonal school for Catholics and Protestants be repealed, as inconsistent with the rights of the Catholic Church. As nearly one half of the members of the Grand Council are ultramontanes, the demand has been rejected only by a majority of a few votes. At the discussion of this question a great majority of the Swiss papers, and all the organs of the Protestant State Churches, pleaded the necessity of reserving to the state a right of vetoing the publication of ecclesiastical decrees. The Grand Council of Fribourg, in which the opposition to the ultramontane majority is reduced to four votes, has resolved to restore to the Jesuits and Redemptorists that portion of their confiscated property which has not yet been sold, and to indemnify them for the rest. The government of Argovia pretends to compel all the priests of the canton, under a penalty of fifty francs, to publish, in their churches, the bans of all mixed marriages, in spite of the prohibition of the bishop; and it is characteristic of European views of Church and state, that the Protestant press finds such a decree entirely proper, though nothing hinders the parties concerned from being married by a Protestant clergyman.

SCANDINAVIA.

Protestantism.-After the rejection of the Religions Liberty Bill by the Swedish Diet, the Law Committee of the Diet

has drafted another bill, which, while depriving the seceders from the State Church of all civil rights, proposes, as the only change in the actual legislation, the abolition of the penalty of exile for secession from the Lutheran State Church. Even this proposition has been rejected by the nobility and the priesthood, but the general expectation in Sweden is, that the opponents of religious toleration will be beaten in the next Diet. Notwithstanding the continuance of persecution, the Baptists make extraordinary prog ress. In one place, comprising one hundred and thirty families, three fourths of the people have joined them; and in another their number has increased from one hundred and fifty communicants to four hundred.

The Roman Church.-"Our last news from the Northern Missions," says the Univers, "is very good. One year since a missionary took up his abode in Iceland. The population of this island has great sympathies for the Catholic priests. The Literary Society of Iceland, of which the King of Denmark is the president, has given a significant proof of it by unanimously electing the apostolic prefect of the Northern Missions, Rev. Stephen Djankowski, a member. In October two missionaries were stationed at the Faroe Isles, and more recently two others have been sent to Greenland."

FRANCE.

The Roman Church. -The harmony between Church and state has remained undisturbed. The Church gladfully receives from the highest officers of the empire the assurance that they, as well as the emperor, value the services of the Church, though it is often intimated that their regard for the Church is entirely dependent on the command of the emperor. This disposition of leading statesmen has been strikingly illustrated by Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers, one of the five generals among whom Louis Napoleon has distributed the military command of France. The Archbishop of Tours and his clergy, having received him at his entrance in Tours with the greatest possible pomp of ecclesiastical ceremonies, and having expressed their joy that the emperor had conferred this eminent mark of confidence on the restorer of the papal authority in Rome, the marshal accepted the compliment, and declared himself to be of those who

1858.]

Religious Intelligence.

believe the cause of order to be insepara-
bly connected with the cause of religion;
but added significantly that, in fulfilling
his mission, he would know only one call,
Long live the emperor; that he would
permit only this one call, and that he
would be unable to serve two masters at
a time. All papers agree, that during
Lent the attendance at the Catholic
churches throughout France has been
considerably larger than any preceding
year. The Journal des Débats conclusive-
ly shows that, in a thousand cases, it is
nothing but a fashion that brings men
back to the mass, to relics, and indul-
gences, though it ought not to be denied
that this fashion would never have sprung
up if it had not been preceded by the
real restoration of Romish convictions in
a large number of Frenchmen. By the
death of Father Ravignan, the Roman
Church has lost one of her leaders, who,
by rare oratorical gifts, joined with un-
disputed sincerity of conviction, purity of
life, and the finest aristocratic manners,
has contributed, probably, more than any
other priest now living to this remark-
able reaction which is still going on.
one of the fruits of this reaction we may
consider the increased number of miracles
which are again reported as occurring in
France, and which in strangeness not
rarely equal the tales of the Middle
Ages. The belief in the miraculous ap-
pearance of the Virgin Mary at La Salette
has scarcely begun to be shaken among
the followers of Rome, when the bare as-
sertion of a young visionary girl, said to
be cataleptic, that the Holy Virgin has
appeared to her, suffices to draw crowds
of five thousand and more pilgrims to the
spot of the pretended miracle.

As

The Protestant Churches.- At Ruffec a number of Protestants had again been fined and imprisoned for having held religious meetings without previous authorization. All of them had suffered in the same way in 1853, and in view of "this incorrigible obstinacy," the government demanded and obtained from the court a severer punishment. During the last year twelve new Protestant churches have been opened in France, ten of which belong to the National and two to the Independent Churches. According to the Bulletin du Monde Chrétien, the number of new Protestant churches built during the last twelve years amounts to over one hundred. Protestantism, while persecuted by the government and the Roman Church, often receives marks of re

gard from the intelligent classes of the
French people. The Town Council of
Brest has contributed twenty thousand
francs for the erection of a new Protest-
ant church. By the death of the Rev.
C. Cook, the Wesleyan Conference of
France has lost its president, and French
Protestantism at large one of its most
active and most respected apostles.

ITALY.

The Roman Church.-The government of Sardinia has been enabled, by a favorable decision of the Court of Cassation, to pursue with greater eagerness than before the suppression of all the convents which heretofore had frequently succeeded, with the assistance of the Provincial Courts, in evading the provisions of the law. In Rome a new jubilee has been celebrated, with numerous indulgences for all its participants, but even the reports of the Catholic papers seem to admit that it has never before been a more signal failure. On the other hand the translation of the Bible by Diodati has been found in many families, and the parish priests of the city have been directed by the government to search for it more carefully, and to confiscate all the copies they find. In Tuscany a society of liberal members of the nobility and of literary men has been formed, to counteract the endeavors of the ultramontane party for the conclusion of a new concordat. They intended to publish, under the title Biblioteca civile, a series of works on the tendencies of the ultramontane party. Of the first volume, " An Apology for the ecclesiastical laws promulgated under Leopold I," no less than fifteen hundred copies were sold in the first two weeks. The government, however, has suppressed the undertaking, and commenced a suit against the directors. But for the sake of peace, it has also forbidden the circulation of the Armonia, the clerical paper of Sardinia.

Protestantism.-In Courvoyer, in Sardinia, where about a year ago a new Protestant congregation was formed, consisting entirely of former members of the Roman Church, the Protestant minister has been served, at the instigation of the priests, with an order of the court to quit preaching; but it is confidently hoped that the government will protect the cause of religious liberty. In Tuscany the rigor of the government against Protestants is said to have a little abated.

RUSSIA.

The Greek Church.-Here, as well as in Constantinople and Athens, the efforts of Rome to call forth a movement in favor of a corporate union of the Greek Church with the Roman Catholic, attract some attention. In Petersburg, a work has been recently published by Wostokoff, "On the Relation of the Roman Church to other Christian Denominations, and to the Human Race," and in Athens a "Review of the Works of the Jesuit Gagarin on a Union,” (Επίκρισις τῶν περὶ ἑνώσεως λόγων τοῦ Ἰησουίτου Γάγαριν.)

Protestantism.-According to an article on Russian Protestantism in the Christian Advocate and Journal of May 13, to which we refer our readers for more ample information, the Russian Bible Society, which, under Nicholas, was suppressed, is again in very active and successful operation. Emperor Alexander II. himself, after a first donation of twentyfive thousand rubles, has subscribed a yearly contribution of ten thousand rubles. Since its re-establishment the Bible Society has distributed more than a million copies of the Scriptures in twenty different dialects. In 1856 it had sold sixteen thousand copies in thirteen dialects. The Theological Faculty of the University of Dorpat, which holds nearly the same High-Church views as the Lutheran Faculties of Erlangen, Leipsic, and Rostock, in Germany, has announced that it will soon commence the publication of a journal devoted to theological science. The leading Protestant periodical of Russia, edited by Dr. Berkholz of Riga, calls the attention of the Lutheran Church, the most numerous Protestant denomination in Russia, to the great spiritual wants of the Protestants of East Siberia, where, upon a territory as large as the United States, only one Protestant clergyman and two Protestant churches are found.

TURKEY.

Mohammedanism.-The insurrection of the Christian tribes in European Turkey has been partly quelled through the interference of the foreign embassadors and consuls, by granting the demands of the Christians, who have received from the grand powers of Europe new promises of patronage, and from the Turks promises of a fair dispensation of justice. Among the Turks the cause of religious toleration

continues to make hopeful progress. Recent examples of converted Mussulmans seem to indicate that the penalty of death for leaving the Islam has been altogether abandoned, and from Marash it is reported that the pasha of that city called on the missionaries in a very friendly manner; a thing, perhaps, never done before in all Turkey. The authority of Mohammed is shaken not only by the preaching of the Christian missionaries, but also by the springing up of new sects among the Mussulmans. La Presse d'Orient, the French paper of Constantinople, mentions a new sect established by a dervish who blasphemed the Koran, and pretended to be a new prophet. He had already collected from ten to twelve thousand adherents, and ruled the district by terror, when the beys of the district rose against him, captured him, and delivered him up to the pasha.

The Oriental Churches.-Russian influence is again growing in the East. Official papers of the Russian Government declare it a mission of Russia to restore to the Greek Church of Turkey her former splendor and power. In many places the Greek clergy receive large subsidies from Russia, and in Jerusalem a Russian archbishop has taken up his permanent abode, in order to superintend various religious institutions, and to tighten the bonds between the Russian and Turkish branches of the Church. Such endeavors are not made in vain, for in Bucharest, Damascus, and several other places, religions festivals have been used by the Greek clergy and people to make grand demonstrations of their attachment to Russia. The intelligence received at Constantinople of the formation of several new societies for effecting a union between Rome and the Greek Church, has produced an extraordinary excitement. The Patriarch has issued a decree, forbidding all members of the Greek Church to send their children to schools which have non-Greek teachers. Also the appointment of any teacher not belonging to the Greek Church at a Greek school is forbidden, and those now employed shall be dismissed. A second decree will be issued concerning those who study in foreign countries, especially at one of the Occidental universities. The patriarch, very sensitive of the attacks which many of his decrees have called forth on the part of the press, has obtained from the government a firman forbidding the press to criticise the decrees of the patriarch.

The Roman Church. According to La Presse d' Orient, the Armenian bishop of Aleppo has joined the Church of Rome, and has therefore been banished by an order of the Turkish Government. There were in Jerusalem, during the holy week, about two hundred Roman Catholic pilgrims from Europe and America, including one caravan from France, and one from Austria. This number, larger than that of former years, is said by the Univers to have produced an excellent and edifying effect among the schismatics, though it is entirely insignificant if compared with the masses of pilgrims from the Oriental Churches, whose number amounted this year to fifteen thousand.

Protestantism. - New encouraging prospects for Protestantism open among the Kuzzelbach Koords, a tribe of mountaineers which, nominally at least, has been heretofore Mohammedan. A missionary, who is himself a converted Mussulman, has been laboring among them for some time, and there are many indi

cations of an approaching rich harvest. In Bulgaria the prospects are likewise so inviting, that the American Board also will occupy four places. In a brief recapitulation of the work of the American Missions in Turkey, (Missionary Herald, May, p. 147,) Mr. Dwight states that more than one hundred and twenty different books and tracts have been translated and printed; among them the Holy Scriptures in the Armenian and Armeno-Turkish languages; that more than thirty evangelical Churches have been formed; besides which there are a large number of places in which Protestants are found, who meet together for worship every Sabbath, though no church has been organized; that the number of Protestants is constantly increasing, though much more slowly than would be the case if the missionaries had the means of employing a larger native agency. It is, therefore, with the deepest pain of heart that the missionaries have recently seen themselves compelled to dismiss several native laborers from want of funds.

ART. XI.-SYNOPSIS OF THE QUARTERLIES.

I.-American Quarterly Reviews.

I. THE THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY JOURNAL, April, 1858.-1. The Inspiration of the Scriptures; Objections to it Refuted: 2. Notes on Scripture; Acts, ch. ii and iii: 3. The Glorified and Unglorified Race during the Millennium: 4. Mr. Hudson's Doctrine of a Future Life: 5. God the Supreme Disposer and Moral Governor: 6. Dr. Livingstone's Travels in Africa: 7. A Designation and Exposition of the Figures of Isaiah, ch. xliii: 8. Dr. Barclay's City of the Great King: 9. Literary and Critical Notices.

II. UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY AND General Review, April, 1858.-8. An Histor ical Sketch of the Anglican Church: 9. Miracles: 10. The Intolerance of the Puritan Church of New-England: 11. Life: 12. Universalism and the Development of Character: 13. Literary Notices.

III. THE CHURCH REVIEW, April, 1858.-1. Mr. Dickinson's Letter: 2. Thomas Crawford: 3. Proposed Liturgy of the German Reformed Church: 4. Parton's Life of Aaron Burr: 5. The Bishop of Tennessee and Church Parties: 6. Dr. Pusey on the Election of Bishops: 7. American Ecclesiastical History: 8. Book Notices: 9. Ecclesiastical Register.

IV. THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST REVIEW, Jannary-March, 1858.-1. A Review of Dr. W. B. Johnson's Article on "Unbaptized Evangelists:" 2. Christianity susceptible of Legal Proof: 3. "Avenging the Elect"-(Matt. a Series of Expositions:) 4. How far are Baptists at Liberty to affiliate with Unbaptized Professors of Religion? 5. The Sabbath: 6. "Practical Value of the Bible:

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