RELIGIOUS.

THE SEAL OF THE CONFESSIONAL AND THE CIVIL LAW.

H. J. HENUSer, W. R. Claxton. American Ecclesiastical Review, Philadelphia, January. ́N speaking of the religious duty on the part of a priest to

him in sacramental confession, we have regard here principally, to the case where this obligation comes in conflict with the requirements of the civil law.

The rights of a public court to exact testimony when there is a question of the common safety, or the vindication of justice within its sphere, stands admitted by the code of common law. Nevertheless, there are limits beyond which the State may not trespass. Its office of controlling the external order for the common weal does not authorize it to enter the private sanctuaries of domestic life, the family, and the individual, unless the latter were to obstruct the common good and destroy the public safety. The silent reflection of a penitent upon his sin before God cannot be said to obstruct the common good. He is not bound by any law of State to confess his guilt, and until direct or circumstantial evidence convict him, he is free before the civil tribunal. Now, when a person confesses sacramentally to a priest, he means simply and only to confess to God. He would not reveal his guilt under any other consideration, and the confessor accepts the condition of his penitent as such, and such only. So far as the State, the court, the public, even the priest himself, outside of the confessional is concerned, the words spoken in the sacred tribunal are as though they were never uttered. The keeping of them, therefore, as a secret, has no direct effect whatever upon the commonwealth; they are like the thoughts of repentance which are spoken to the inmost heart, where neither judge nor jury, nor witness may pry.

In acknowledgment of this fact, secular jurisprudence admits, on general grounds, the sacredness of the confessional. The courts of France and Germany, for example, while their governments exercise public discrimination against the Catholic clergy, allow that a priest called to testify in court may disavow all knowledge obtained from a criminal in confession.

The legislation of the United States on this subject is not uniform even where it is pronounced, and in many cases no provision is made at all to shield a priest against being punished for contempt of court in case he refused to testify to knowledge which he is presumed to have obtained in the exercise of his sacred ministry as confessor. In the earlier part of the present century, a case occurred in the city of New York calling forth wide attention, and which has served not only as a precedent in similar cases, but caused the adoption of a clause in the Revised Statutes of New York to the effect that no minister of the Gospel or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall be allowed to disclose any confessions made to him in his professional character, in the course of discipline enjoined by the rules and practice of such denomination (Rev. Stat. III., c. 7, art. 8, sec. 72).

But few cases have since then occurred in which American judges showed any disposition to place a priest in the embarrassing necessity of declining testimony which he was supposed to have received through the confessional.

Yet while our courts, on the whole, deferred to the duties of conscience in the individual citizen, we have no guarantee that this would be the case under all circumstances. In the direction in which the common current of public opinion is driving us with the noisy ripples of liberty and advancement, it is taken for granted, as a sort of ethical maxim useful in practical politics, that the universal conscience must supersede the individual conscience, and that where religion comes in conflict with the popular will, expressed in the government and

State legislation, it must yield as a private interest to the general good. Even where the law seems to favor the freedom of conscience and to insist upon the sacredness of certain confidential communications, it may readily be quoted against such exemption, even setting aside the discretionary power of a judge to interpret its meaning as going aside of the letter. As to the obligation of a priest to withold all evidence which he has obtained solely under the seal of confession the rule is clear. No consideration on earth, not even the fear of instant death, can justify him in betraying what he has learned in the confessional. To do so would be to commit sacrilege.

It becomes, then, an important and practical question: how is a priest to conduct himself in cases where he is authoritatively required to make statements which involve the violation of the "Sigillum." Theologians agree that under such circumstances a mental restriction could not be construed into a falsehood, even were a confessor to assert under oath that he is absolutely ignorant of any matter which had been communicated to him solely under the seal of confession.

As regards the present position of the law in the United States, communications made by a husband to a wife or vice versa, and the confidences reposed by a client in his attorney after that relation has been established between them, are privileged in all the States of the Union, and in the case of priest (or minister) and penitent in New York, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, California, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, Nebraska, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, North and South Dakota, as well as Utah and Arizona.

Such communications, therefore, in the States where the privilege does not exist, may be the subject of judicial inquiry, and the priest (or minister) to whom they have been made is liable to be committed to prison for contempt of Court if he decline to reveal them.

It would seem that in the United States Courts the privilege may be extended as a matter of grace, and there is reason to assume that if the question of the confessional comes before the Supreme Courts directly, unembarrassed by any State law binding that court, it would hold that it is privileged on the broad ground of public policy.

The common law of England requires a direct Act of the Legislature of a State to exempt a priest or minister from giving testimony as to knowledge received by him from a penitent, and as experience shows the impossibility of compelling a priest to give testimony on such matters, it seems difficult to explain the law as it now is, in so many States.

THE NEO-CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT IN FRANCE. VICOMTE EUGÈNE MELCHIOr de Vogüé. Harper's Monthly Magazine, New York, January.

IN

N the masterly study which M. Taine has just published on the religious state of France, he arrives at the following conclusions: During the past few years there has been a renewal of zeal and activity in the clergy, in the religious congregations, and in the flock of the faithful; the ascendancy of the Catholic faith has increased within these limited groups, while it has diminished in the popular masses of the towns and rural districts, which, by an insensible and slow reaction, are in course of becoming once more pagan.

The conclusions of the eminent historian may be accepted as being temporarily exact, so far as concerns the bulk of the French nation; but they leave out of the question the intellectual élite of the young generations, the nucleus of high culture wherein the directing ideas of the future are being elaborated -the writers, the professors, the students, the cultivated people in general, who take an interest in philosophic speculations. This intelligent élite is now passing theough a very curious crisis of thought, the symptoms of which are not easy to discern. A number of young writers of repute are agreed in affirming

that a period has just closed with the decline of the principal influences which French thought used to obey, and that a new period is beginning under the empire of other influences that are still confused. Before ascertaining in what this metamorphosis consists, let us, first of all, call to mind what the French freethinker was during the preceding phase.

In the first half of this century the French freethinker was above all Voltairian; his religious incredulity was merely one of the aspects of the revolutionary instinct. He pursued with the same hatred God, kings, and priests, because these formed part of the Old Régime. After 1848, the simultaneous progress of all the sciences increased unbelief, but modified its nature in cultivated persons. Men acquired faith in science as being susceptible of indefinite progress, capable of satisfying the intelligence by expounding the universe to it, and of alone procuring the happiness of men, by satisfying all their moral and material needs. The famous book of Draper, The Conflicts of Science and of Religion, would resume exactly enough the state of mind of intellectual circles at the end of the second empire and the beginning of the third republic.

The doctrines of some mighty masters and their scientific faith had slowly sunk into the average intellects in the university, in the influential press, and in all the centres of ideas. In proportion as they reached the lower strata, their doctrines lost the studious serenity which they had maintained on the heights, and combined with the still vigorous tradition of Voltairianism, and with the spirit of opposition to the clerical empire, and later to the monarchical assemblies which sought to restore the throne and the altar. Men brought up in this atmosphere neglected nothing to realize, in the republic, this ideal of their youth; they imposed the heaviest sacrifices upon the State for the purposes of popular education, with the conviction that they were at last going to annihilate Christianity and convert the whole nation to the new religion of science. One might well have supposed that the generation which was submitted to this decisive test would be definitely emancipated from all religious preoccupation. It is precisely the contrary which has come to pass.

For a hundred years after the destruction of the political and religious dogmas of the past, France had lived on a few fragile dogmas, which had, in their turn, been consecrated by a naïve superstition. These dogmas were the principles of 1789-the almightiness of reason, the efficacy of absolute liberty, the sovereignty of the people—in a word, the whole credo of the Revolution. In order to shake that faith, it was

"

"

as

necessary that human reason proclaimed infallible, should turn its arms against itself; the fortress would have to be dismantled by those whose mission it was to defend it. And that is what happened. Scientific criticism, after having ruined all dogmatism, took it into its head that it was its business to verify afresh, and when once started upon this path it made as short work of the revolutionary legend as of the monarchical one, and showed itself as pitiless for the Rights of Man for the Rights of God. M. Taine is the redoubtable thinking machine who has pulverized the whole frail edifice that had been built up within a century, and as this man is venerable by reason of his austere love of truth, as his honest and mighty genius is justly the pride of our race and of our time, his action upon contemporary intellects has produced incalculable effects. At the present time, for independent and reflective minds the new dogmatiṣm is still more difficult to accept than the old, and this latter destruction having made a clean sweep of all certain notions, these minds have sunk into absolute emptiness.

We have here a sufficient explanation of the nihilism and pessimism which invaded the souls of the young during the past ten years. At the very moment that politicians were celebrating the definite emancipation of man by science, and the conquests of the Revolution, all the philosophical and literary productions of the young generations manifested gloomy

despair. While our material civilization is multiplying its prodigies, and placing at the disposal of man all the forces of nature; while that civilization is increasing tenfold, the intensity of life in a society where life offers enjoyments only to the leisured and cultivated classes, behold we hear sounding on the peaks of intelligence a great cry of discouragement: "Beware of deceitful nature; fear life; emancipate yourself from life!"

This cry uttered first by the masters of contemporary thought a Schopenhauer, a Taine, a Tolstoi-was interpreted differently according to each one's turn of mind, becoming Buddhistic Nirvana, atheistic nihilism, mystic asceticism. Rationalistics, sceptics, atheists, the minds that are most emancipated from religious beliefs return by a different route to the state of mind of an Indian yogi, an Egyptian anchorite of the second century, or a scholastic monk of the eleventh century. But already a new fermentation is taking place in the majority of thinking heads, as is attested by the testimony of many recently published works. The young men of independent and cultivated thought are still for the most part refractory to any positive religion, but their prejudices against the religious idea have disappeared. They are prepared to seek, without prejudice, what germs and possibilities of true Christianity are really hidden in the moral growth that we are witnessing.

Whatever may be the effective results of the neo-Christian crisis, they will require a long time to come to a head; and when the religious idea shall have conquered the cultivated classes, it will have to reconquer, by a slow process of infiltration, the people at large. We are in the presence of a nebula which is forming and wandering in the celestial space. The Creator alone knows the hour and the place which he has marked for the condensation of this nebula into a star.

N

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE NAZARETH OF TO-DAY.

G. SCHUMACHER, OF Haifa.

Zeitschrift des Deutschen-Palæstina-Vereins, Leipzig,
Band XIII., Heft 4.

AZARETH, the city in which the Saviour spent His

youth and early manhood, is one of the most important centres in Palestine. The old city, called by the Arabs En-Nasira, lies surrounded on all sides by hills; the newer

portions, called Chanuk, are built on the hill slopes to the North and Northeast, as is also the valley, becoming wider toward the South. The position of the town is very beautiful. Through the zeal of the present Governor, the streets have nearly all been paved. The lowest part of the city, the Latin Cloister, is 360 metres above the level of the sea; the highest points are from 420 to 450 metres. The growth of the city within the last twenty years has been at least 33 per cent. According to the official census, taken in 1887 by the writer of this article, by appointment of the Turkish Government, the population then was 6,575 souls. A new count, aken in January, 1891, during preparation of this article, gave the following result:

ally is a Jewish traveling merchant permitted to remain there for a limited period, and then only under the special protection of the government. Two German and several English families reside there.

The town is divided into a number of Quarters, each Quarter settled by the adherents of a particular creed, with one or more Machtarije, or government officials. Nazareth constitutes a curious oasis or island, linguistically. It has a dialect quite peculiar to itself, the pronunciation of the inhabitants differing from that of the neighboring towns. The character of the modern Nazarene is, in general, upright and acceptable (angenehmer). Especially does the virtue of hospitality prevail, as is usually the case in inland cities. The Nazarene delights to open his house to strangers, to have all his rooms occupied and be compelled to borrow beds from his neighbor. In the evening the neighbors gather to greet the guests, which visit is called Sahra, or evening entertainment. Accordingly there is a current saying: “A Nazarene gives with full hands." This saying is justified by fact. The relations between the Christians and the Moslems were, until recently, very good. In recent times, however, the Christians are beginning to complain of the growing influence of the Moslem capitalist and landowner, Sheck Jusef Fahhum; and Moslem fanaticism is beginning to antagonize the Christians. The matter is made all the more serious because the wealthier Christians, in order to gain the necessary influence with the government in the transaction of affairs with the Fellahs, or peasants, are compelled to take Moslem partners. Nazareth is the seat of a Turkish

Kaimmakam, or Vice-Governor of the second rank. The Seraj, or government building was erected three years ago. There are no troops in Nazareth except a few police soldiers and ten or twelve mounted guards. The city, however, has post and telegraph offices with international connections.

The inhabitants are engaged in agriculture, cattle raising, business and trades of all kinds. No other city, with the possible exception of Bethlehem, has such manufacturing interests. In recent times the Russians have been crowding into the place and have established new schools. The city suffers from want of water. The Latin Christians have four churches or chapels; the Maronites, one; the Orthodox Greeks, four; the Synagogue in which Christ is claimed to have taught, is now in the hands of the United Greeks; the Protestants have one church; the Moslems, five mosques. Then there are seven cloisters. The Moslems have one large school, recently erected; the Orthodox Greeks have three schools, all taught by Russians, and only one for girls; the Latins have two large schools, in one of which several European languages are taught. The English Protestants have five schools, one for boys, two for girls, and two for small children. Then there is a school for girls conducted by the Dames de Nazareth, who are Roman Catholic nuns; and, lastly, a school for small children conducted by the Loenor de St. Joseph. In most of these manual training is also a fixed part of the curriculum. There are a number of charitable institutions. Notable among them is the Syrian Protestant Orphanage for girls, controlled by the Presbyterians; the Austrian Hospital of fate bene fratelli; the Hospital of the Scotch Mission. Then there is a Russian physician who makes no charge for his services, as also three Russian women physicians who do the same. There are two hotels, the German and the Hotel Nazareth, managed by a native. Jusuf Zeitun. There are also Turkish baths, eight public bake-ovens, several cafés and drinking places. The shops, stores, etc., in which goods are offered for sale number akout 200. There are 23 carpenters in the town, 9 millers, 12 tanners, 10 dyers, 39 shoemakers, 9 saddlers, 8 blanket makers, 3 seine makers, 8 tinners, 10 weavers, 6 tailors, 6 goldsmiths, 69 stonemasons, 22 stone breakers, 6 lime burners, 24 gardeners, 16 barbers, I soap manufacturer, I confectioner, and representatives of other trades. About 300 are engaged in agriculture, as about one-tenth of the city lies on the Plain of Jezreel.

About one dozen men buy oil, lard, and olives from the Fellahs and sell these goods through the town. Some eight or ten keep mules and horses to hire to strangers. Then there are professional smugglers of tobacco and several professional hunters. On the whole, Nazareth can be pronounced a well to-do city, especially since the middle class is larger here than it is at Akko, Haifa, and other cities. With the exception of the poorest day-laborers, about every head of a family has his own house. There are but few rented houses in the city. As a rule, a young Nazarene does not think of marrying until he can call at least a one-roomed house (akd) and a garden place (hakura) his own.

GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS OF UTE CHILDREN. Journal of American Folk-Lore, Boston, September.

THE

early life of the Indian child is closely associated with that of its mother. At home or traveling most of its time is spent in the kun, a sort of cradle made by the mother out of wood and buckskin.

After it is old enough to quit its prison, the child continues for some years to be the constant companion of its mother. If a boy, he remains under the maternal care until he is old enough to learn to shoot, and engage in manly sports and occupation.

Indian children resemble their white brothers and sisters in disposition, and the manner of amusing themselves. The small Indians play, laugh, cry, and act precisely as civilized children, and toys are as much a necessity with them as with our own little ones. They make their own playthings, and derive as much enjoyment from them as white children do from those which are bought in the stores. In this respect, necessity being the mother of invention, they display more ingenuity than the little men and women of the east.

At White River agency in northwestern Colorado, I one day came across a small papoose, probably six years of age, who was employed in making toy-horses of mud, the legs being supplied by slender willow twigs. He had finished six or eight of them, which were excellent imitations of the animals which stood as his models, and in his childish way as he arranged them in pairs, he made me understand that they were ponies starting out on a hunt.

A little Ute girl was occupied in drawing-not with pen and paper, or slate and pencil, but utilizing the materials which nature had given her she had taken a smooth cobble stone, and with a sharp flint had etched the figures of an Indian boy and girl dancing, and the production would have put to shame any kindergarten pupil.

A year later we were traveling through the barren cañons of southeastern Utah. On all sides we saw quantities of broken pottery, and picked up here and there specimens of delicately fashioned arrow-points, some of them so tiny that they could hardly have served for anything but toys. One day we found unmistakable evidence of the recent presence of children, in a rude play-house. A rough table had been formed by laying a large flat stone across two supporting rocks; on this a dozen pieces of the ancient pottery from the neighboring mines had been extemporized for a tea set, and arranged as though the little Utes had been playing tea-party, the edibles being represented by little piles of sand and pebbles. In selecting their dishes the children had exhibited a remarkable appreciation of the beautiful, as these specimens of pottery were the finest and largest which we saw in that section.

In Arizona, the Moqui boys amuse themselves with their miniature bows and tipless arrows, and their little throw-sticks (somewhat resembling boomerangs) practicing for the hunt.

The girls are all provided with dolls decked out with colored feathers and brilliant rays, or rain-gods, carved out of rotten wood and gaudily painted, and it is a difficult matter to induce them to part with these treasures.

Books.

12mo, pp. 316.

HOMILIES of scienCE. By Dr. Paul Carus. Cloth. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. 1892. [These" Homilies of Science," the author tells us in his preface, are not hostile towards the established religions of traditional growth. They are hostile towards the dogmatic conception of those religions. Nor are they, he continues, hostile toward free thought. Standing upon the principle of avowing such truths alone as can be proved by Science, they reject that kind of freethinking only which refuses to recognize the authority of the moral law. For the benefit of our readers, who are not acquainted with Dr. Carus's works, we will make such a presentation of his views as the space at our disposal permits.]

IT is a rule that science derives its laws--the so-called natural laws

from such facts alone as repeat themselves again and again, and from such as can be verified by experiment, from such as are accessible to the observation of every one who takes the trouble to investigate. This rule is unequivocally acknowledged in science. It is accepted by some, with a certain reserve-in philosophy. Yet it is recognized in religion by few only. Although, if it be true in science, it must be true in religion also. If religion be based upon veritable facts it stands upon a rock. If it be based on an assertion of facts that happened once and will never happen again, it is built upon sand.

Christ's doctrine, in so far as it is the religion of love, stands upon the moral facts of human soul-life. The ethical truth of Christianity rests on solid ground. Christian dogmatism, however, stands or falls with the history of Christ's life, his death, and resurrection. Had not orthodox Christianity been supported by the great truth of Christ's religion of love, it long ago would have disappeared, for Christianity as an historical religion is indeed extremely weak. What must a religious truth be that has to depend upon the verification of a few asserted historical facts? And these asserted facts are in themselves improbable, nay, impossible; they stand in contradiction to all the facts verified by science, and, whether they are true or not, have not the least bearing upon the moral conduct of man. Whether Christ healed a few lepers or not, whether he abstained from all food for forty days or not, whether he has bodily risen from the dead or not, the " ought" of ethics remains the same.

Hindoo religion expresses it, the veil of Maya that lies upon our eyes. The man who recognizes this ego to be a sham has become a Buddha, i. c., a knower-one who knows; one from whose eyes the veil of Maya has been taken. He no longer lives the sham life of egotistic desires that moves in the circle of never satisfied wants, but he has entered Nirvana. The annihilation of the ego is the condition of a better life, of a broader and higher existence. Christ says: Whoever shall lose his life shall preserve it." And this same truth lies at the bottom of all true ethics.

All labor for egotistic purpose would be vain, for we shall die, and the purpose for which we have worked would be gone. But if we aspire for a further evolution of cosmic life, the purpose of our lives will not die with us; we shall continue to live in our deeds and thoughts, and in those who are inspired by the same ideas; as Schiller says:

"Art thou afraid of death? Thou wishest to be immortal? Live as a part of the whole; when thou art gone it remains." This view of immortality is not less, not smaller, nor more meagre than the immortality of a ghost-soul whose very existence is an unwarranted assumption. It is more; it is grander and sublimer; although those who have the veil of Maya upon their eyes, who still believe in the sham entity of the ego, cannot understand and appreciate it.

[After dealing with the great problems of speculative thought, the author comes down to practical problems of Sociology which he approaches also from the same scientific position.]

The mistake made by anarchists as well as by socialists is that individualism and socialism are treated as regulative principles, while in reality they are not regulative principles; they are the two factors of society. Neither of them can be made its sole principle of regulation. You might as well propose to regulate gravity on earth, by making either the centrifugal or the centripetal force the supreme and only law, abolishing the one for the benefit of the other.

Individualism is the natural aspiration of every being to be itself; it is the inborn tendency of every creature to grow and develop in agreement with its own nature. We might say that this endeavor is right, but it is more correct to say that it is a fact. But, then, socialism is a fact also. 'I am not alone in the world; there are my neighbors and my life is intimately interwoven with their lives. My helpfulness to them, and their helpfulness to me constitute the properly human element of my soul, and are perhaps ninety-nine one hundredths of my whole soul. The social problem demands an inquiry into the natural laws of the social growth, in order to do voluntarily, what, according to the laws of nature, must, after all, be the final outcome of evolution.

DIE RUSSISCHEN SEKTIErer, mit BESONDERER BERÜCKSICHTIGUNG DER、 NEUEREN EVANGELISCHEN STRÖMUNGEN IN DER ORTHODOXEN KIRCHE. Pp. 53. Leipzig: Fr. Lucas. 1891.

[The determined effort of the Russian government by brute force to strangle all religious dissent, and especially the life and death struggle of the Protestants in the Baltic Provinces, have aroused the keenest interest throughout Christendom. Add to this the further fact that the Nonconformists are growing as never before, and it is clear why the brochure at the head of this article, which appeared anonymously, but is understood to have been written by one of the exiled Protestant pastors, and is based upon native Russian sources not accessible to Western writers, should have a more than ordinary interest. After sketching in outline the various Russian dissenting sects from the Strignolniki of the fourteenth century to the sects of our day, the author gives in detail an account of the evangelical movements that are now active within the Russian church. We confine our sketch to this part.]

tions, who, like ourselves, will aspire to the same aim, and struggle for similar, perhaps even higher ideals.

The idea of immortality resting on a true instinct, and on a natural conviction of the indestructibility of life, cannot be easily blotted out from the human mind, even though mixed with errors. And the idea of immortality need not be eradicated. We have simply to weed out the errors that grow around it by the slow and long process of patient education. Those who have freed themselves from the old errors that attached to the conception of immortality look smilingly upon their former views, as the man thinks of his having been a child with childlike thoughts.

The old view of considering our ego as a real entity is, as the sacred

always been the prevailing tendency. In the days of Alexander I., there was a strong agitation in favor of a spiritual and Biblical Christianity, especially as long as that Emperor was under the influence of Madam Von Krüdener, whose pietistic religious zeal affected that Emperor materially. Then it was that the Bible Society in Russia was organized, and the Bible was translated into the vernacular. With the reign of Nicholas I. (1855), a reaction began against a Gospel Christianity, and, with a partial interruption during the time of Alexander II., has grown steadily, until now through the fanaticism of Alexander III., it has reached the present height. Yet now as never before the Evangelical movements flourish, and the Russian Holy Synod, as well as their press organs and the anti-dissenting activity of the Orthodox Mission Society, bewail their inability to check this development.

The most prominent of these Evangelical Nonconformists are the "Stundists." The name is derived from the German word "Stunde" or hour," from the fact that the movement begun among the German colonists, who held " Prayer-hours or meetings. In reality, the founder among the Russians themselves was a peasant, Ratushney by name, who was a Congregational Elder or Presbyter in Osnowa, near Odessa, who later found an able assistant in Balabok, a peasant from the Kief district. They began by holding meetings for devotion and prayer, studying the Bible diligently. Then they rejected the worship of images and icons and soon severed their connection with the Orthodox Church. Persecution soon followed, but the Stundists increased. They have no ordained ministers, but select from the congregations those who have the gift of tongue. They have no fixed rites or liturgy. The sermon is the centre of the services, although they have a number of excellent collections of hymns. They have three services each Lord's Day, each lasting from two to three hours. During the week they have frequent prayer-meetings. Once a month they celebrate the Lord's Supper, and on Maundy Thursday they wash each other's feet. The management of the congregation lies in the hands of the elder. Great stress is laid on good morals. Smoking, drinking, dancing, card-playing, and the like is absolutely forbidden. They are strongly prejudiced against higher education, and sometimes show a fanatical hostility to the State Church. Religion in the family is insisted upon strenuously. Prayers at the table are the established custom. Revival meetings are regularly held. Since 1844, they have General Conferences, and they have extensive mission enterprises.

Another evangelical sect are the so-called "Christians," with headquarters at Kief, where they first made themselves felt in 1885. Their religion consists in "the faith in Christ and in a strictly moral life." In this as in other particulars they are similar to the Stundists. The same is true of the third sect, the "Baptists," only that they do not practice infant baptism. Their propaganda began in 1880. The total number of these Evangelical Dissenters is not known, but they may number two millions or more.

THE ADVERSARY, His person, POWER, AND PURPOSE. A Study in Satanology. By William A. Matson, D.D. 12mo, pp. 238. New York: Wilbur B. Ketcham.

[The barbarism on the title-page is not of the author's invention. In the adoption of it here a much narrower scope has been given to the word than it was originally meant to have. In maintaining that there is a personal Devil, Dr. Matson interprets literally the Old and New Testaments. There is no trace of his having given any attention to the Higher Criticism. At the same time he has advanced beyond the idea of the Prince of Darkness appearing on the earth with horns and hoofs. If, in tempting Christ, as recorded in the New Testament, Satan " appeared in visible form at all, it was as an angel of light, of transcendent beauty, and speaking the language of heaven." We give the writer's cosmogony-the hypothesis of which, however, he does not claim as his own-and his conclusions on several points.]

MODERN science declares that this globe, or at least the elements

which compose it, were in existence for a period of immeasurThis able duration before it became fitted for the habitation of man. can be reconciled with Scripture. The first words of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," refer to a period inconceivably remote from the date of the fitting of our globe for human habitation. The phrase, "the earth was without form and void," describes a state of confusion and disorder such as the wreck of a former world would be. God had created a world vast and beautiful, an abode of angels. These reared against the Almighty the standard of rebellion. The legions of Satan were vanquished, and this globe of ours became a total wreck and ruin, without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep-a wreck and ruin which would have been eternal but that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the chaotic mass, and order began. Then, after six successive fiats, each one, it may be, marking a triumph over opposing forces of evil, the Sabbath of rest dawned upon the discomfited and routed forces of Satan; and God, the Creator of all, bestowing upon all His benediction, very good," the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

The word Satan occurs in Scripture for the first time in the book of Job. The book of Job is a true history, but with a poetic treatment. The scene in heaven where the "sons of God" are assembled, and Satan appears among them, need not be regarded as a narrative of what actually took place in the courts above, but, as it has been styled, "a piece of allegorical scenery, somewhat resembling the

council of the gods in Homer." Its truthfulness is like that of a painting, in which the accessories only are according to the painter's conception.

Every sin is of the Devil, and is the result of his taking advantage of our natural weakness to lead us astray from God. It is his method to seize upon each person's peculiar constitutional or other weakness, which supplies a substratum of infirmity, giving Satan a hold upon us, and through which he too often draws us into his toils.

Heathen and pagan priests avowed an intercourse with demons. It is not necessary, however, for us to admit that they had such intercourse. Yet this is what was done by Christians generally through the Middle Ages, and even down to the present century. The process of reasoning seems to have been this: Paganism is of the Devil. Pagan priests acknowledge and boast that they have intercourse with demons. Therefore, their arts and sorceries and soothsayings are not to be regarded as tricks and impostures, but as actual workings of the Devil.

What is a "" possession" of the Devil? In those physical possessions mentioned in the New Testament there was not merely a conflict of impulses or inclinations-reason and conscience on the one side, and disposition on the other, which is the case in all allurement to sin, but there was another power than the person himself; not a mere influence which by strength of will he could and ought to control, but a power that took possession of him and led him where it would, in spite of himself. It was as though another and stronger being had seized him and carried him at will. Satan may indeed seize upon a lunatic, taking advantage of his physical weakness; and we may be at a loss where to draw the line between the physical and the spiritual-the disease and the possession are so strongly blended. Where there is a clear case of health, however, the demoniacal possession is more readily identified.

There is an impression, derived from the statements of travelers and others, that in some non-Christian lands are to be found unquestionable cases of demoniacal possession. If what we know as spiritual manifestations be not all a fraud, they come from some disembodied intelligences or spirits. That is to say-just as in ancient days disembodied spirits did hold communications with men, so they do now. Among them, however, are lying spirits. There is, therefore, no plausible reason for doubting that Satan, who is sometimes transformed into an angel of light," is capable, through his lying spirits, of personating deceased friends, and in that capacity deluding, through pretended communication with them.

MASSAGE AND THE ORIGINAL SWEDISH MOVEMENTS, THEIR APPLICATION TO VARIOUS DISEASES OF THE BOD Y. Lectures before the Training Schools for Nurses connected with the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, German Hospital, Woman's Hospital, Philadelphia Lying-in Charity Hospital, and the Kensington Hospital for Women, of Philadelphia. By Kurre W. Ostrom, from the Royal University of Upsala, Sweden; Instructor in Massage and Swedish movements in the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine. Second Edition, Enlarged. With Eighty-seven Illustrations. 12mo, pp. 143. Philadelphia: P. Blackiston, Son & Co. 1891. [The title-page shows that the contents of this little book have been made known to a large number of persons in Philadelphia through the mouth of the author. To those who know nothing specially about the Swedish Movements, the handy publication will be a revelation, in showing how the method of the Movements has been systematized, and what a wide range of ailments they underdertake to cure or to alleviate. We are told that the Massage treatment is not unfrequently applied by charlatans who do not know even the anatomy of the human body, and thus sometimes break bones instead of mending them. These considerations lend force to the recommendation mentioned below of Mr. Ostrom, a Swede, who, before coming to the United States, received instruction from those who in Sweden are thought to be best acquainted with the subject.]

MASSAGE and Movement treatments should be applied by edu

cated and properly trained persons only, with due regard to a physician's directions.

The operator (if not a Doctor of Medicine) should be of the same sex as the patient, with the exceptions of a trained Masseur who has studied at a university or of a trained female nurse who is attending a patient in a family.

There should be a place where skillful and trained operators can have an opportunity of passing an examination and of registering, thus protecting not only themselves and their profession, but the general public also.