THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

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DATE OF THE CRUCIFIXION. HEN did Jesus Christ perish on the cross? The Christian world, so far as it agrees to celebrate any day in commemoration of the event, keeps Good Friday; but that day depends upon Easter, which is a movable feast and not an anniversary. Those who are curious in matters of New Testament chronology will be interested in a brief article on the subject in Cosmos (Paris, October 19), which we translate below:

"Our Savior having died at the age of thirty-three years, according to tradition, and the Christian era having begun at His birth, one would logically conclude that He died in the year 33 of the common era.

"But this date can not stand to-day, when questions of chronology are much more studied than they were when Denys the Little published his calculation of the era. The starting-point of the present era is five or six years later than the Savior's birth, from which it follows that if He died at the age of thirty-three years, as tradition asserts, His death took place in the year 29 of our This last date is in accord with the affirmation of Tertullian that the crucifixion took place under the two consuls Geminus, 'whose consulate fell on the year 29 according to our method of reckoning.

era.

"It is then admitted that this event, which changed the whole history of the world, 'took place in the year 29 of our era; but what was its exact date?

"The old theologians are full of coincidences, of which they have found the elements in the Fathers of the church and the ecclesiastical writers. Jacques Tirin, in the prologues of his commentaries, examining the question of our Savior's death, says that it took place on March 23, and that March 23 was the day when Adam and Eve were created in the terrestrial Paradise, committed their first sin, and were expelled from that place of delights.

"The reparation, then, effaced the fault, chronologically. We give special attention here below to these coincidences, for the day belongs to man alone; for God, in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday, these calculations have little value. However this may be, it is not on probabilities but on calculation that we must base any endeavor to obtain the exact date of the Savior's death.

"Father Carlo Melzi, a Barnabite, has devoted himself to this ungrateful problem in chronology and treats of it in the recent proceedings of the Academy of the Nuovi Lincei. We shall simply report his conclusions, for it is impossible to follow the author in the long discussions on which they are based.

"He holds that the original Good Friday was the 18th of March in the year A.D. 29, or the 14th of Nisan of the year 3789 [in the Hebrew calendar] and that Easter coincided with the vernal equinox.

"Nevertheless, we must add, the author's solution is not completely satisfactory; he admits as much himself. The best accredited tradition speaks of March 23; it is to recall this date that the grand jubilee of Our Lady at Puy-en-Velay was instituted. He avows that March 23 of this year satisfies the same conditions as March 18, but he believes that there was a transposition of days, the Jews having, for this year, adopted the Roman equinox, or that tradition has falsified the day of the Savior's death to make it coincide with the Roman rather than with the Hebrew equinox. These reasons may be satisfactory, but it is probable that whatever the efforts of the chronologists may be, we shall never reach a clear and precise solution of this historical problem. However, the limits are now fixed within such narrow boundaries that we ought to be satisfied.

"It matters little to know at what date our Savior died; what is of importance is to know that He died for us, and still more to merit by a holy life the fruits of His passion."—Translated for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

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HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE PENTATEUCH. NUMBER of notable contributions have recently been made to the discussion of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. The leading points of one of these, the article by Prof. A. H. Sayce in The Contemporary Review, were given in THE LITERARY DIGEST of October 26. Professor Sayce maintains, it will be remembered, that recent investigations tend rather to confirm than to refute the traditional view of this subject. The same position is strongly upheld in a work just out by Prof. William Henry Green of Princeton, on "The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch." Among other things Professor Green says:

"The higher criticism has of late been so associated with extravagant theorizing, and with insidious attacks upon the genuineness and credibility of the books of the Bible, that the very term has become an offense to serious minds. It has come to be considered one of the most dangerous forms of infidelity, and in its very nature hostile to revealed truth. And it must be confessed that in the hands of those who are unfriendly to supernatural religion it has proved a potent weapon in the interest of unbelief. Nor has the use made of it by those who while claiming to be evangelical critics accept and defend the revolutionary conclusions of the anti-supernaturalists tended to remove the discredit into which it has fallen. This is not the fault of the higher criticism in its genuine sense, however, but of its perversion."

Still another article on the same general subject appears in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, by Prof. Howard Osgood of Rochester Theological Seminary. In this paper Dr. Osgood makes answer to an article by Dr. Henry Preserved Smith on "What has the Higher Criticism Proved?" Of the nine points in reference to the origin and authorship of the Bible, which Dr. Smith presents in this article, Dr. Osgood here maintains in regard to eight of them that they "have been claimed as discoveries, proved by the same arguments for over two hundred years,' and quotes from Spinoza, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Reimarus, Bolingbroke, and other well-known rejectors of the Bible, to show that they were in perfect accord on these points with men in these modern days who have chosen to pose as "higher critics." A question related to this controversy over the Pentateuch has been discussed recently in the New York Sun and The American Israelite. The particular point here is whether the Egyptians possessed an ancient literature at the time when Moses was found among the bulrushes. The Sun having asserted that there was such an ancient literature, Editor Wise of The Israelite made reply as follows:

"We are led to believe, after reading The American Israelite for a long time, that Rabbi Wise has a fair amount of respect for the Oriental scholarship of Prof. Max Müller. In the October number of The Nineteenth Century, Professor Müller has an essay upon the age of certain sacred books, in which he speaks of the antiquity of the Vedic literature of India. He quotes Mr. Tilak as putting the time of the origin of that literature as far back as 6000 B.C., and Professor Jacobi as putting it at a later period, and says that tho he himself puts it at a yet later time, it is, in any event, far earlier than the times of the Pentateuch of Moses. 'Let the Brahmans,' he remarks, 'have the full credit of possessing the oldest, the most remote, and, in consequence, the most obscure and the most difficult of the sacred books of the world.' He then resorts to questioning. 'Are there not the higher critics who tell us that 2000 B.C., and even 4000 B. C., is quite a modern date compared with the dates of Egyptian and Babylonian monuments? And are there not still higher critics, who assure us that even that ancient Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, as represented in hieroglyphic and cuneiform writings, must be looked upon as quite modern, and as the last outcome only of a much earlier and far more primitive civilization or non-civilization?""

FRANÇOIS COPPÉE.

"No question of theology would be agitated. We have odious recollections of those tumultuous discussions in which priests and monks bombarded each other with texts and insults, exchanged anathemas, and finally separated, more inflamed than ever with the rage for persecution. But

the fires that burned Huss are extinct, and the daggers of St. Bartholomew are rusty. At the Congress of Religions no one will open his mouth about the Immaculate Conception or the Real Presence, but, as at Chicago, there will be a simple and honest search after a common ground of religious peace and conciliation of souls. "That which happened on the other side of the Atlantic is a good example for us. There not only did ministers of various Christian and even pagan faiths meet without throwing their Bibles at each other's heads, but, while reserving their Credo, they bent before a common ideal, before a universal and supreme religion-that in which all men, at last fraternal, recognize a single God and a single Father. Believing-with the immense majority that God exists, that faith is natural to man, that it is his greatest strength and surest consolation, they endeavored to conceive and express the religious idea in its absolute purity.

"This elementary religion, if I may so term it, this religion of men loving one another as brothers for the contentment of a celestial Father, may one day transform humanity into a single family, tenderly united. Do you say that this is only a dream? Well, at any rate, it is the sublimest of dreams."

M. Coppée then discusses the probability of securing the Pope's sanction; while recognizing that the project will meet fanatical opposition among some of his advisers, he believes that the Pope would be pleased to see the French Catholics take the initiative in its execution, and would allow them freedom of action—a belief which has probably been somewhat shaken by a very recent letter written by the Pope to the American branch of the church.

The article concludes with the following answer to the objection that it is useless to dream of a universal religion when there is every indication that humanity will soon cease to trouble itself about the mystery which enwraps it.

"Tho we may note, indeed, in our old Europe, and especially in the oldest and most exhausted races-like our own-a weakening of the religious sentiment, we do not remark any correspond ing progress toward happiness and virtue. It even seems that men, deprived of a superior ideal, but more than ever devoured by the chimerical spirit, suffer with worse impatience and bitterer pain the unavoidable injustice of their lot, and that the most ungovernable among them are on the point of satisfying their appetites and at least avenging their misery by any and all means, even by crime. Alas! as in former times, there are fanatics ready to kill and to die. The wretched are in a state of exasperation, without supernatural hope to console them, and the sati

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ated, filled with terror, are surrounded by envy and hatred. secret instinct tells even the least pessimistic that we are living in perilous times; at the black horizon the rumblings of an approaching tempest are beginning to drown the lying voices of the leaders of the people who dare still to talk to them of confidence and hope and to renew promises which are no longer trusted. "Liberty of conscience is to me a thing sacred, and, altho fundamentally religious, my mind rebels at myth and idolatry. But I am convinced that it is not true that man can live happily amid the gross materialism which unfortunately infests us. On the contrary, it fills him with a profounder sense of his solitude and his inability to cope with the iniquities of nature and life. There is no morality, and therefore no happiness, without an ideal. The soul has wings; it can rise above dogmas and cults. into a serene region, where it perceives a higher justice and truth; and never did it mount higher than the infinite spaces opened to it by the teaching of Jesus. There it finds itself before a Lord. who is the most merciful of judges and the tenderest of fathers, and who forgives all its impurities and lapses, provided it has obeyed the Christian law, the law of love and charity.

"This religion, which is mine, makes life tolerable, for it. pours upon the soul's wounds the delicious balm of hope. Among the sad and sober masses of to-day it could still work miracles of consolation. ` Pious and worthy priests, forgetting their doctrinal differences, have assembled, once already, in America, to loftily proclaim this simple, pure, and truly diviné belief. Let them renew, here in Paris, this admirable skyward flight. All hearts. will join them in their act of faith, all voices will repeat their prayer."- Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

ANOTHER CALL FOR A NEW CLERGY.

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HE Episcopal clergy are not respected, not looked up to, not. listened to, as they were even thirty years ago, says Rev. H. R. Haweis (who trains with the "Broad church" section of the Church of England) in The Contemporary Review for October. The expansion of lay knowledge has, he thinks, lowered the prestige of the clergy and "revealed their narrowness and inefficiency." Mr. Haweis traces the work and reviews the influence of the Church of England down to the present from forty years. ago, when it was still living on the afterglow of the great evangelical movement forever associated with the names of Wesley and Whitfield." He sees that "dissent in every kind of form becomes daily more glorious with its big chapels and choirs and congregations." He notices a similar decline of the Episcopal. Church throughout the United States, and remarks that in influence and up-to-dateness there is no comparison at present between the Episcopal and Nonconforming bodies; further, that the Nonconformist preachers lead in the big cities, while the Roman Catholic Church throughout the United States and Canada. more than holds its own against all the sects put together, "by its single-heartedness, power of adaptation, instinctive recognition of popular thought-currents, and its personal devotion and sagacity." So Mr. Haweis declares that "we of the Church of England want a new clergy, men whose opinions are not despised, whose fitness is not called in question, whose capacities are gaged, and whose energies are directed by something like a church administration." He continues:

"The inaudible mumbler, the sporting 'Dodo' curate, the lifeless drone, the weakling parasites who take orders, some for social positions, others to fill family livings, and many because they could not get 6d. per day in any other profession, these, of course, must be put aside at once as malignant if not incurable sores; no doubt they all help greatly to reduce the tone of the Established Church, but they are no new social evils. The real crux is rather to be found in the sort of thing the clergy are trained or even expected to preach, and the sort of thing the people decline any longer to listen to. Until this is changed or mod. ified the church will never recover its prestige or attract any considerable number of thoughtful people. Meanwhile the man in the pew thinks he has a right to remonstrate with the man in the pulpit who denounces him as an unbeliever. He may fairly say

to his clergyman: 'You complain of me for not believing what you call church doctrines; how much do you believe yourself? Now, you don't actually believe that after this life, without further explanation, the population of the world will be divided into two parts, the converted and the unconverted, and that one half will go straight to heaven and be happy forever, and the other half will be sent straight to hell to be tormented forever. You don't believe that yourself, because you are not such a fool; then why do you expect me to sit in church and listen to you patiently while you preach it?' . . . 'You don't really believe,' continues the man in the pew, 'that everything in the Bible is infallibly inspired and correct; but where is the clergyman who will get up in church and say "everything in the Bible is not infallibly inspired and correct"?" But I need not go through the dreary catalog of putworn dogmas; dry rot is in the whole thing, and it is ready to crumble at a touch! It has come to this: the laity not only despise the clergy for their affirmations, but still more for their reticences, and yet few (some do) have the heart to condemn them as unscrupulous hypocrites-they are really often such nice fellows in many ways, and moral fellows too; so as people don't like to think they are liars, and can not quite believe they are idiots, they conclude that they are a race of men apart, and hence the witty saying has arisen, 'Society is composed of three sexes, men, women, and clergymen,' and this is all very well as a grim sort of joke, but it solves nothing and mends nothing. Sooner or later the question has to be asked, 'Why keep up so many doctrinal shams, when even bishops are capable of making and accepting moderate and even helpful restatements?""

Mr. Haweis thinks that at this time something like a new doctrinal reformation is at hand, and in this connection observes :

"The sixteenth-century reformation was more a moral than a doctrinal one-the twentieth-century reformation will be more a doctrinal than a moral one. It is coming along, with a new pulpit and a new clergy, but that reformation, whatever other useful developments it may take on, will consist primarily, like every past reform, in coining new doctrinal phrases in harmony with contemporary thought."

He closes by saying:

"In the church of the future 'the great, glad, aboriginal instincts' will have to count once more, nor will the infinite sigh of the soul for an excellency, purity, and beauty supernal be therefore stifled. He who will give us not only restatement in doctrine, but the true law of subordination of the lower to the higher in the conduct of life, the life of progress in the scale of ascension; he who will show the purity, because the fitness, of all things in due season and in ripe proportion, who will preach, with Christ and Paul, the supremacy of love, which is the loss of selfish life in the flood-tide of regenerated humanity-he will be the new priest of the near future. We will have no more mongrel philosophy; we will have no more divided allegiance, and no more confused ideals. The dear old angels may have to go out, but the great archangels will come in; we shall know them, and we shall follow them; they will lead us to 'the Christ that is to be!""

"A life of probity or ordinary virtue is one thing; sanctity, taken in the strict meaning of the word, is quite another. They may very well grant you that there are among Protestants some virtuous and honest men, but saints who have habitually and constantly followed the path of the heroic virtues, who have faced death with joy and even resignation, amid trials the most difficult and temptations of every kind, amid persecutions, contradictions, derision and injury; saints whose good acts were recompensed by ingratitude, and who never ceased, however, to pray for their persecutors, to offer up for them their penances and tortures in all humility and in a spirit of incessant mortification-no, Protestants have no saints of this kind and never can have them!"

"This," remarks The Independent, "is charity for you, and published when the news was fresh of a dozen Protestant missionary martyrs in China and Africa.”

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS REVIVALS.

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HE psychology of religious revivals has been but seldom discussed by scientific investigators, and scientific literature on the subject by adherents of that denomination which peculiarly favors, if it did not originate, revivals, otherwise known as "protracted meetings," is scarce. A notable contribution of this sort comes from the pen of A. D. Watson, M.D., L.R.C.P., and appears in The Canadian Methodist Review (October). The object of the article is to show that certain phenomena which occur occasionally in some revival meetings, especially where the physical and psychical conditions are favorable, are not only useless but dangerous, and are not to be attributed to piety, but to physical weakness or mental perversion. Dr. Watson thinks that these "unwholesome manifestations" have too often, from profound ignorance as to their true nature, been absurdly attributed to the agency of the Holy Ghost. After considering the general conditions which are present in a typical revival, he takes up the "unsaved" subjects, whose chief tendency is to "yield," and with whom no powerful motive is required. He says:

"They are negative characters. Passivity renders them strong under the stimulus of extraordinary and commanding minds, but is a source of weakness when such stimulation is withdrawn. In them any action which may be suggested, either orally, mentally, or physically, while they are in a highly sensitive condition and under the influence of psychical stimulation, is likely to prevail. Such stimulation is sure to be present, to a greater or less degree, in camp-meetings and revivals, and where suggestions of the desirability of peculiar excitations, and of, the physical or objective phenomena which such excitations produce, are not wanting, there will most surely be a plentiful display of grotesque and unseemly seizures, trances, prostrations, or convulsions. These persons, beyond all others, act and reenact the old farce of being 'converted' at every revival, and relapsing during every interrevival period."

Quoting from Archbishop Sharp, who said, "The peace and joy of the Holy Ghost is always rational, there is always some good ground, some solid foundation for it, in the mind of the man that feels it, which foundation is a good conscience; a being able to satisfy ourselves from the testimony of our hearts and lives that we are sincere and unfeigned in our desires and endeavors to approve ourselves to God as His faithful servants," Dr. Watson continues:

"All other states of excitation are but the product of a heated brain in an individual of weak personality, uncontrolled by those powers of reason and will which are always regnant in the wellconducted mind. It will thus be understood why the objectionable features of revivals are so frequent among the unlettered aboriginal peoples, when missionaries go among them. Indeed, excessive outbursts of feeling, manifested in hysterical proportions, almost invariably occur among persons of an excitable temperament, among those of weak will, or those of a debilitated physical constitution. Given a number of such persons in a series of meetings, and if the evangelist should appeal chiefly to motives of fear or to the intensely emotional part of the sensibility, rather than to urge the case mainly upon its reasonable and righteous grounds; if the evangelist have a powerfully magnetic and commanding presence, and insist on certain forms without clearly defining that obedience to the Lord, rather than the mere performance of the evangelist's desire, constitutes duty; further, if it be understood or surmised that there would be general approval of any exceptional occurrence, such as prostration or highly wrought or excited movements, these demonstrations are pretty sure to occur."

Further on he says:

"For the suppression or exclusion of trance-like or convulsive conditions, it is necessary for the minister to discourage, and to teach his people to discredit, all abnormal and aimless seizures as being no evidence of piety, but rather of the most self-centered and self-seeking of all diseases, hysteria. There will be no continuance of the trouble if he calls these cases of uncontrollable

excitement and ecstasy by their common name, and ask that the hysterical sister, or the brother who is suffering from nervous trouble, be taken out by some of the friends so that the meeting may not be further disturbed. A decisive and positive attitude should be encouraged on the part of the hearers toward the Christian life, and no evangelist should allow any hearer to think that standing up, or speaking, or going forward, is in any sense meritorious if done simply to please him. . . . When prostrations occur during meetings they are not to be attributed to the Holy Spirit. They have in hundreds of instances been shown to depend on physical or mental deterioration, often accompanying or presaging a state of acute mental alienation. Besides, Christianity needs no extraneous assistance of so grewsome or grotesque a nature, but is a sweet, healthy, reasonable religion, everywhere and always, when associated with a healthy body and a sound mind. Neither are these derangements to be charged to Satan, as has sometimes been done. It is not wise to bring Satan as an important causative factor into movements which result so generally in awakening to righteousness, unless his presence can be clearly demonstrated."

In conclusion Dr. Watson says that we have in the past held too persistently to the saving efficacy of feeling; that emotion, like doctrine, is of little importance except as an expression of our relations to the life and purposes of Jesus and His Kingdom. "It is well," he adds, "that our people are more than ever basing their estimate of these things on their direct relation to conduct and Christian duty."

IMPROVED METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY.

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RECORD was made in THE LITERARY DIGEST of October 19 of recent utterances in the religious press tending to show a considerable degree of dissatisfaction with the present methods of Sunday-school instruction in the Bible. Reference was also made to a new and independent course of lessons proposed by The North Carolina Presbyterian. The question thus brought up is one of intense interest to all the denominations where the International Lesson System is in use, and the discussion is certain to develop some very pronounced differences of opinion. Thus The Christian Observer objects very strongly to the new course proposed by The North Carolina Presbyterian and defends the present system as the wisest and most satisfactory. Other papers like The Watchman of Boston, The Christian Work, The Independent, and The Methodist Recorder think that the time has come when some radical changes in the prevailing system ought to be made. A most significant indication of the tendency of thought on this subject is found in the action of the International Lesson Committee in preparing an optional course of primary lessons for 1896. In a note in The Sunday-School Times where these new lessons are to appear, the committee explains its action. After referring to the great pain which it cost to make this change (the partial surrender of the uniform lesson idea) and of the great good done by the International Lessons for twenty-two years past, it adds: “But within the past few years the study of child-nature has come to be a science. The truth that the mind of the young child is essentially different from the mind of the youth and adult is now conceived to be of such importance that it is no longer to be ignored in religious any more than in secular education." The vote of the committee to prepare this optional course was taken in March, 1894. The result of their labors, which, as The Times says, "have been long and difficult," is now for the first time made public. Commenting on this new departure The Evangelist says:

"That young people who have attended Sunday-school since childhood should be totally ignorant of the great outlines of Scripture history, almost unacquainted with Scripture biography, and with but a vague conception of the great teachings of the Bible, is almost unpardonable. We do not say this to cast reproach on the young people; most of them have doubtless done the best they could with the opportunities given them. But we

do mean that it is a neglect of duty to allow the possibility of such results. The state looks after the secular education of its children, because ignorance is fatal to the Republic. So is ignorance of the Bible fatal to the church. The children of this world are in this respect wiser than the children of light. The state, we say, has authority in this matter and the church has not. Yes, but where power is wanting and the necessity remains, there is all the more call for due care in the use of means to accomplish the desired end. If the state needs to spend so much time and money on secular education, much more does the church need to be in earnest about Biblical education. The Sunday-school is the agency of the church for doing this work. It holds a unique position. It occupies the citadel of our faith. On it is laid the great responsibility of training the young in the knowledge of the Scriptures.

"We hold, then, that the especial function of the Sundayschool is the study of the Bible, with the emphasis on the word study, with a firm determination that this study shall be broad and thorough and according to the best methods, and with implicit faith that the truth itself, which is better than any human interpretation of it, will do its own blessed work if we but give it a fair chance. It is the 'thus saith the Lord' that reaches men's hearts, that 'finds' them, as Coleridge says, and the closer the Bible itself in its native strength and simplicity can be brought to the heart and conscience, the better will be the results. To this one end of thorough Bible study, the study of the Bible itself, and not of what men say about the Bible, everything in the Sunday-school should be subordinate."

RELIGIOUS NOTES.

THE returns thus far received from the Methodist annual conferences show that 4,365 delegates have voted for the admission of women to the General Conference, and 1,662 against it. The total is 5,421, one quarter of which number is 1,356 and three quarters are 4,074. The amendment therefore has received the constitutional number of votes to pass it with a surplus of 294. These are the figures to date, and the vote represents the voice of nearly all the autumn conferences which are said to be the most progressive in the church.

AT a recent lecture by Rev. George Jackson, of the Wesleyan West-End Mission, in Edinburgh, it was stated that the late Professor Huxley, notwithstanding his attacks on Christianity-storming of empty forts the lecturer declared them to be-requested his family to attend church. Mr. Jackson also declared that Mr. John Morley's mother was a Methodist, and pointed out that his declarations of his unbelief were all made before he entered public life and met men of the religious character of Mr. Gladstone.

ACCORDING to the reports presented at their recent annual meetings the outlook for the Congregational churches in this country is highly encouraging. There has been an increase of 58,442 in the membership within the last three years. Within the same time 651 churches have been added to the roll, making an net increase of 359 or 119 a year. The largest gain in membership has been in the interior of the country.

A CANADIAN writer and teacher, Professor Wylie, of Toronto, sums up the essentials of choir-leaders as follows: (1) That they be full of faith, and the Holy Ghost; (2) that they have such knowledge of the sentiment of the Psalms and of the music that they can render the song with the proper expression; (3) that they possess good common sense, and keep out of the choir all 'scrapping.'"

AN evidence of non-sectarian feeling worth recording is that of a prominent citizen of Petersburg, Va., who has given $250 for the purpose of a memorial window to be placed in St. Joseph's Church now in course of erection in that city. The following inscription is to be placed on the window: "To the Glory of God and in honor of His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons."

A STRANGE proceeding on the part of a religious body is reported from Los Angeles, Cal. The Los Angeles Presbytery, it is said, has suspended the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of that city because he and his session were not willing to accept a change of name and be known as the Westminster Presbyterian Church.

THE pastor of the Waldensian colony which was founded two years ago in North Carolina, denies the report that the colony is a failure. He says that this year's crops will put the colonists above want for the coming year, and that the people have no intention of returning to their European homes.

THE names of Jacob and Joseph have been found on Babylonian inscriptions belonging to the time of Abram. One scarab from Egypt bears the name of Jacob who was a Pharaoh, hence the inference that the Hebrews, Babylonians, and Egyptians were at that date intimate with each other.

A SPECIAL effort is to be made in Germany to induce the Protestants of that country to return to the Roman Church. During the present month eight German prelates, including the Archbishops of Cologne and of Posen, will go to Rome to initiate the movement under the guidance of the Pope. A CALIFORNIA pastor has had to resign because the people were not satisfied with the preaching of his wife who supplies the pulpit during his absence.

FROM FOREIGN LANDS.

TURKEY'S THREATENED DISSOLUTION.

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HE attempts of the powers to keep alive the "unspeakable Turk" (as Gladstone called the Ottoman Empire), so as to escape the necessity of quarreling over the division of his estate, are proving unsuccessful. A Cabinet order decreed reforms in Armenia, and the decree was followed by a special proclamation from the Sultan himself, to give it additional weight. But now the Mohammedan subjects rise up against the Sultan. As in many other countries, even more civilized than Turkey, the people have been flattered by their leaders, and kept in entire ignorance with regard to their real standing among the nations. Hence the Turks can not understand that the Sultan is forced to accede to the demands of the "misbelievers." The empire is said to be on the verge of anarchy, and the Powers may have to interfere to enforce order. According to the latest dispatches to the London Times, the Kurds are again massacring the Armenians. The Vossische Zeitung, Berlin, predicted this. That paper says:

"What a pity that the Sultan could not make up his mind to accept the advice of the powers in May last. It would not then be evident to his people that he had been forced into compliance. The fact that the Armenians are now specially favored must rouse the Mohammedans. The Kurds will be the first to revolt, for the power of the Turkish Government over this restless tribe is very small."

The Sabah, Constantinople, publishes a conciliatory explanation of the proposed reforms. It says:

'It has been said that the Armenians are to be specially favored by the Sultan, and that they will receive privileges which are not to be granted to his other subjects. That is, however, not the case. Some of the laws now in force are found to be defective, and will be revised. The administration of justice and the police, both in the cities and in the country, will be reformed. These reforms are intended to benefit all the subjects of the Calif, whatever their race or creed. But changes can not be adopted throughout the country without due deliberation, and the province of Anatolia has been chosen to give the new laws a trial.”

The Turkish Government makes use of orthodox methods to quiet the populace, as well as the modern method of inspired newspaper articles. Many leaders of the Young Turk movement have been arrested, some have been beaten over the stomach "to quiet their spirits," as The St. James's Gazette remarks; others have vanished for good, and it is hinted that they were simply shot. The Journal des Débats, Paris, doubts that these methods will work, and remarks:

"It is undeniable that it will be very difficult to satisfy all the elements of Turkey's population, and without the active assistance of the people the proposed reforms can not easily be carried out. It is therefore to be hoped that the men whom the Sultan entrusts with reforms are not only firm, but also acceptable to the populace, and able to inspire confidence; else order can not be restored."

Russia, about to extend her power in the Far East, looks with displeasure upon the threatening dissolution of Turkey. The St. Petersburg press throws the blame upon the British Government. The Novoye Vremya is of opinion that England was not only perfidious during the whole transaction, but also unnecessarily insolent toward Turkey. The Grashdanin assumes a similar tone, saying:

"France and Russia had better withdraw from the whole business. By joining England in bringing diplomatic pressure to bear upon Turkey, they have assisted the insular empire to turn the Armenian question into a naval or military adventure against Russia, and at the expense of Turkey. If the Armenians in Turkey are treated as an independent people, their brothers in Russia will become restless. This is just what England wants.

She would like to create a second Poland for Russia in the Transcaucasian provinces."

A few German papers repeat these suspicions, but the inde. pendent press believes that Lord Salisbury was forced into the Armenian troubles, much against his will, by the Nonconformists. Russia certainly seems to be preparing for the grand finale, and Austria is watching her movements anxiously. The Neue Freie Presse, Vienna, says:

"The Russian troops are massing on the Caucasus frontier, ready to march into Armenia, and the Black Sea fleet will be brought into play if England sends a fleet through the Dardanelles. The Balkan nations are well aware of the gravity of the situation. The Servian papers think that the present troubles must end either in a European war or a revolution in Turkey. The Sultan is also preparing for the emergency. His wives and children will be sent to Adrianople, and it is possible that he will go there himself."

The Handelsblad, Amsterdam, thinks the whole Eastern question could be settled by the realization of the following few ifs:

"If a law were put in force making all subjects of the Sultan equals before the law, irrespective of their religious persuasion. If honest judges are appointed in every province, men prudent enough to take into consideration the customs of the people. If an end is made to all corruption; if taxes are levied justly, and private property of real estate is recognized."

But that is just what no Turkish Government will do. It is very doubtful if the United States will be able to remain a mere looker-on if the European powers intervene. The numerous American missionaries are in great danger, and altho they are under the protection of the English, life may be lost, and compensation may have to be enforced.—Translated for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

E

ENGLAND'S UNPOPULARITY.

NGLAND is unpopular just now, and the educated Englishman knows it. The Spectator, London, candidly discusses the subject. With the French, thinks the writer, the unpopularity of the English almost passes into actual hatred. Russia finds England tiresome and unamiable; Germany discovers in her a source of irritation wherever she comes in contact with her; even Austria regards her as intolerably selfish. Italy alone presents a pleasant face. America acknowledges that John Bull is worthy and virtuous, but thinks that he is in his international intercourse a blundering, bullying, grabbing power, with no regard for the feeling of others. As for the little powers, England is Dr. Fell with each of them. They want consideration. The poor Southerner 'would rather be plundered by a nobleman who gives him a bow and a salute, than have a loaf of bread chucked him by a rich bourgeois who makes a joke about his lantern jaws and empty belly." The writer continues:

"But it is not easy to state the cause of this unpopularity. No doubt, in the case of the great powers, our vast commercial prosperity, our success in the work of governing distant empires, and in doing what all the world now wants specially to do-i.e., develop colonies-our easy solution of the Socialist problems, and our stable yet democratic scheme of government, all tend to make us deeply envied and so very unpopular. . Our present and past good fortune as long as it lasts-tho how long that will be who can tell?-must be paid for in the unpopularity which envy always breeds. It is a law of nature. You can not grow and prosper above others without envy, and envy must fasten unpopularity on the object envied. But this is, of course, not the sole source of our unpopularity. That is also based on a general belief that we are at once selfish and materialistic in our aims, and that we never act on large or wide or noble ideas, but merely look to the main chance. The nations would hate us less if we had tried or were known to aim at universal dominion. What they can not bear is the feeling that we intend to have the best of every bargain, and that having got it, we always explain that we only