LENT SERMONS preached last year in the Imperial Chapel of the Tuilleries, by an Italian Monk, Father Ventura, on the Christian Political Power, have been published with a preface of Louis Veuillot, the editor of the Univers. The author declares it to be the duty of a Catholic government not to confer any favor whatever on Protestants; and if he does not demand that they be extirpated by fire and sword, he at least adroitly insinuates that they should be prevented from extending themvelves. The feelings of the French Protestants are greatly offended at the emperor having selected such a fanatic as a court preacher. A better reception the new volume of the "Conferences" of Father Lacordaire has found, which the celebrated Dominican (who, on account of his republican sympathies, is still exiled from the pulpits of Paris) held two years ago in Toulouse. They are said to be the best which the greatest Catholic pulpit orator of France has written. During the last months the good understanding between THE GOVERNMENT and the Roman Church has been seriously endangered by a decree which intends to force all beneficent institutions to sell their landed property, and to invest the whole proceeds in state rents. It has called forth a very energetic protest on the part of the Catholic party and the Catholic press, and it is believed that the government will recede from its position. Better pleased is the Catholic party with a decree on the colportage of books, which calls on the Prefects to prevent foreign societies which dispose of considerable resources, sending agents into France to call forth agitation. It of course hints at the British Bible and other societies.

Protestantism. The religious ANNIVERSARIES in Paris were celebrated, as usual, in the month of April. Many of the societies were enabled to report, for the past year, considerable progress, and none showed a decrease of zeal and eagerness. Several societies had again to complain of persecutions to which Protestants are exposed on the part of prefects and other magistrates; it was especially Guizot, who entered a solemn protest against the policy of the government in cautious yet eloquent and decided words. The anniversaries, as well as the Protestant life in France in general, are distinguised for the almost entire ABSENCE OF HIGH-CHURCH VIEWS, and the principles of the Evangelical Alliance meet no

where with a more general and hearty support than in France.

ITALY.

The

The Roman Church. The honor of THE CATHOLIC PARTY IN SARDINIA has been greatly compromised by the investigations instituted with regard to the late elections, which clearly establish that the clergy have not only intimidated the electors with threats of exclusion from the Church, of eternal damnation, and the like, if they should refuse to vote for the Catholic candidates, but have even resorted to bribery. A number of elections, for example those of both the publisher and editor of the Armonia, the ultramontane paper of Turin, had to be annulled on that account. New salutary laws have been passed on PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, and the erection of normal schools in the provinces, which was resolved upon by the Senate with twenty-six votes against twenty-three, cannot fail to promote the education of the people. reorganization of the MONASTIC ORDERS, which is one of the favorite schemes of the present pope, has again made some progress, the influential order of the Benedictines having lent a favorable ear to the papal suggestions. Also the erection of NATIONAL SEMINARIES for foreign nations is progressing. The Illyrian bishops are erecting, at their expense, a large Illyrian seminary, and a convent has been assigned by the pope for the establishment of a North American Seminary. In LoмBARDY the Bishop of Bergamo has carried his point, the silencing of the anti-Catholic press. The suppressed Gazette of Bergamo has not reappeared before having recanted all that had been said in its columns against the Catholic Church. In Naples a new seminary for foreign missions will be established. The subscriptions for its erection have had a satisfactory result: it has already been presented with a library of five thousand volumes, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Naples himself will be its first superior.

Protestantism.-The Potestant HosPITAL OF GENOA, which was dedicated on June 8, 1857, has published an interesting annual report. The original number of eleven beds has already been increased to twenty-three. Up to the end of December forty-one patients, among them twelve Italians, were received. The annual expenses in its present state are estimated at about nine thousand francs.

It is conducted by evangelical deaconesses. The EVANGELICAL CONGREGATION OF NAPLES, which was founded in 1826, under the patronage of the Prussian embassy, and consists of Germans, Swiss, and French, has now a flourishing boarding and day-school, attended by sixty-five pupils. On February 1st a reading-room was opened for the members of the congregation. Divine service is now celebrated once a month in SALERNO, which has one hundred evangelical Germans. The Protestants of Naples have won golden opinions for the Protestant name by the liberal aid bestowed on the sufferers from the late earthquake. The English opened a subscription, and had a considerable sum distributed through the Catholic clergy. The German, Swiss, and French Protestants distributed thirty-two thousand francs themselves, and remitted an equal sum to the government.

RUSSIA.

The Greek Church.-THE LARGEST EDIFICE OF THE GREEK CHURCH, the Church of St. Isaac, at St. Petersburg, was consecrated on June 10th. The pageants and processions were grand, and good seats, at a window favorably situated, were paid for as high as one hundred and fifty silver roubles each. The cost of the whole magnificent building is reckoned (though this is probably a gross exaggeration) at £13,500,000. The interior, comprising a space of sixty thousand square feet, and taken up neither by seats nor by organs, (in the place of the organ there is a choir of one thousand men's voices,) is very imposing. The hope for an official introduction of THE NEW STYLE in the secular and ecclesiastical chronology of Russia has been for the present disappointed. There is no doubt of the enlightened views of the emperor on this subject; but the Greek clergy oppose it in Russia, as well as in Turkey and Austria, from a blind aversion to anything that proceeds from the "Latins." If the recent intelligence that a RESTRICTION OF THE POWER OF THE ORTHODOX GREEK CLERGY has taken place, is true, we may soon hear of more and greater reforms. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS is prosperously progressing. According to the latest accounts, committees of emancipation had been formed in not fewer than thirty-eight governments of Russia, in which there are 9,713,000 serfs.

Protestantism.-The German periodicals of the Baltic Protestant provinces,

especially the "inland," occupy themselves seriously with the question of PUBLIC INSTRUCTION and the means of enlarging and improving it. Prussia is generally pointed out as the model thatdeserves to be imitated. Some speak even of an emancipation of the school from the Church. The theological periodical of Riga apprehends some danger from these incipient movements, and talks ironically of peasant boys who have learned to hold a pen between their dirty fingers. At all events, it sounds well to read in a Russian paper that it has the proud consciousness to be in the midst of a powerful development, such as the country has never been in before.

TURKEY.

Mohammedanism.

- Several new outbreaks of MOHAMMEDAN FANATICISM leave no doubt that the Mohammedan population is in an extraordinary fermentation. In Bosnia six thousand Christians have been compelled to seek refuge on the Austrian territory; in Belgrad the house of the English consul had been attacked; the war with Montenegro has lost nothing of its fierceness; new massacres of Christians were feared in Syria; the population of Candia has handed to the consuls of the Christian powers a long list of complaints against the governor and the Mohammedan population; and, finally, Jiddah, a small town of Arabia, the port of Mecca, was, on June 15th, the scene of a horrid tragedy, no less than twenty Christians, among them the English and French consuls, having been cruelly massacred by the fanatical Mussulmans. Twenty more

would have shared the same fate, if they had not found refuge on board the English frigate Cyclops. It is feared that these outbreaks have their origin in a far extending conspiracy of the Mohammedan world against the growing influence of Christians. The good intentions of the Turkish government no one doubts; for in every one of the above named cases it has taken measures to curb the fanatical spirit of the Mohammedans; but it is seriously doubted if it will have the power to prevent much longer a general combat of the Mohammedan and Christian races.

The Greek Church.-The Patriarch and his Council are very slow in complying with the provisions of the Hatti-Hoomayum, which demands a REORGANIZATION OF THE GREEK CHURCH. They use all the

means that are in their hands to delay the fatal moment when the numerous sources of their rich revenues will cease to flow. On May 22d, a note of Mahmud Pasha, Minister of Foreign Affairs ad interim, called for an explanation why the twenty delegates who are to form the new Council of Administration, had not yet arrived at Constantinople. The Council

of the Patriarch pleads a deficit of ten millions of piasters in the treasury, and wants to know who is to pay the sum if the bishops are no longer permitted to levy it on their flocks. The Turk has promised to make up the deficit, if only the patriarch and bishops will accelerate the reorganization of the Church. It is reported that the bishops are again quarrelling with THE PATRIARCH, and that he will soon be compelled, after the example of so many predecessors, to resign.

The Roman Church. The character of THE CONQUESTS OF ROME among the Eastern Churches has recently received a striking illustration by the example of two bishops, one a Greek and the other an Armenian, who, on their wish to join the Roman Church, were admitted without any further examination, loaded with presents, honored with letters from the pope, and with the patronage of the French consuls, and turned out impostors as soon as their object had been reached. On the other hand, it is again reported that several Armenian villages and about four hundred Jacobite families have acknowledged the supremacy of the pope. THE MONASTIC ORDERS, especially those whose superiors reside in France, display an amazing activity. They vie with each other in establishing churches, schools, and hospitals. Several superiors-general have lately made exploring tours through Asia Minor, and declared themselves well satisfied with their reception on the part of the population. A great influence on the Eastern Churches is exercised by the College of the Jesuits of Ghazir, which was founded in 1844, for the education of a native clergy. It counts at present nearly two hundred pupils, all of whom

are educated for the priesthood. In order to connect the Eastern Churches which have acknowledged the pope, but still retain many peculiar usages, for example, the marriage of the priests, more closely with Rome, the Jesuits endeavor to induce their pupils to take vows of celibacy. Already six Arabians have been ordained priests, and taken the same obligations as the Roman priests in the Occident. One of them has founded a congregation of native school sisters, who now teach many schools and receive numerous novices. THE LATIN PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM, Bishop Valverga, who displays likewise an extraordinary zeal, has in his theological seminary at Jerusalem twenty-six pupils, all native candidates for the priesthood.

Protestantism.

- The Protestant CONGREGATIONS AMONG THE ARMENIANS have received large accessions, for example, in Marash, where, at one time, fortynine persons presented themselves for examination, twenty-eight of whom were received to Christian fellowship. In CONSTANTINOPLE the Protestants are indebted to the munificence of the sultan for a large cemetery, which has been enclosed with a wall at the joint expense, of the Protestant governments, (England, Prussia, United States of North Americs, Holland, Sweden, the Free States of Germany, and Denmark,) each of which states will receive a separate part of it. The congregation of BELGRADE, in Servia, has received from the prince five thousand florins as a contribution for church and parsonage, and an annual contribution of six hundred florins for the support of a clergyman, but admits on that account the same disastrous influence of the government on its ecclesiastical affairs, which has proved so fatal to the growth of Protestantism in the other European states. In JERUSALEM deplorable misunderstandings have occurred between the English and Prussian Protestants, and Bishop Gobat, who was arrested by order of the English Consul, thought of resigning his post.