GREAT BRITAIN.

The Protestant Churches.-Lord Palmerston, than whom, as the Evangelical party believes, no man has ever appointed better bishops; than whom, as the High Churchmen say, no man has ever done more harm to the Church of England, has been succeeded as Prime Minister by Lord Derby, who is supposed to sympathize with the Broad Church party. The friends of Dr. Pusey find, however, some consolation in the assurance that there is some good Church influence in the new councils, and that at all events the new Prime Minister will not do them as much harm as Palmerston. Derby has declared himself against the abolition of Church rates, which is desired by a large majority in the House of Commons; against stopping the annual support of the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth, unless a fixed compensation be granted to it; and for a continuance of the connection between Church and State. latter question," says the Press, a political organ over which Mr. Disraeli is supposed to have some influence, "is more and more becoming a large question of vital importance, which is no longer looming in the distance. Statesmen do not like to talk of it, or to think of it; for it is a hard and thorny question. But whether they shrink from it or not, the controversy draws nearer and nearer, and it will hardly be possible for the most cautious politicians to avert an open struggle for many years longer. This, this chiefly and solely, is the remaining battle-field between

"This

Conservative and Liberal." The bishops of the Established Church, though among them well-nigh every shade of opinion in the Church is represented, are unanimously opposed to a revision of the Prayer Book, as moved in the House of Lords by Lord Ebury. This has given particular satisfaction to the High Churchmen, who, on the other hand, are greatly offended at the discussions of the upper house of the Convocation for Canterbury on daily Church services, "because the right reverend fathers of the Church discourage the observance of the clearest intentions of the Prayer Book, to say nothing of the warrant of the Holy Scripture." An attempt to carry in the same Convocation a resolution against the "violent infraction of the most solemn rights and privileges of the Church, committed by the new Divorce Act," failed. In the province of York the archbishop, as usual, refused to allow to the Convocation any opportunity of proceeding to business, gravamina against which procedure were signed by nearly all the members present. three archdeacons of the Diocese of Oxford, appointed by the bishop a committee to investigate the charges of Romanizing tendencies brought against the Cuddesdon Theological Seminary, have negatived the principal charges, though they find "some unfortunate resemblances to the practices of the Roman Church." The long controversy on the admissibility of Archdeacon Denison's Eucharistic Doctrines in the Church of England, has been finally settled by a decision of the judicial committee of the Privy Council, dismissing the

The

appeal of Mr. Ditcher against the sentence of the Court of Arches. But, terminated in England, it breaks out again in Scotland, where the Bishop of Brechin is charged with un-Protestant views on the same subject by his colleagues of Edinburgh, Argyle, and Glasgow. The English Methodists report about six hundred thousand dollars missionary contributions the last year, being an advance on the preceding year. Their number of Church members has likewise increased, and they never stood in an attitude of more strength and dignity before the religious world than at this hour. At a synod of the English Presbyterians, held in Manchester, a motion against the use of the organ was carried by a majority of 72 against 62. The Society of Friends has diminished in number during the last half century, though the population of Great Britain has more than doubled itself.

to the Weekly Register of London, the Roman Church has been joined during the last three months by several other clergymen of the Established Church, and by Lord Norreys, eldest son of the Earl of Abingdon. This will place another English earldom under the influence of Rome. On the first of May Cardinal Wiseman performed the solemn blessing of four ships at Deptford, the first instance of the blessing of a ship in England since the Reformation. Extraordinary occurrences are reported from the Irish College in Paris, an institution which prepares some seventy Irish students for the priesthood, and whose supreme direction is vested in a board of the Irish bishops, representing the entire Irish episcopate. The president, Dr. Miley, has, without charge, trial, or investigation, expelled the two other professors from the institution, and induced the French government, against the wish of the cardinal archbishop of Paris, to serve them with a peremptory order to quit France at once, or else they would be flung into prison for six months. Dr. Miley is said to be jealous of the Irish spiritual direction, and to lean on the secular government. The case will be investigated by a general meeting of the Irish prelacy in June next. In the mean while, to allow the irritation to subside, a vacation has been decreed.

GERMANY, PRUSSIA, AUSTRIA. The Protestant Churches. - All parties in Prussia seem to be aware that

the Prince of Prussia delays a radical change in the Church government only out of regard for his brother, the king. The resignation of Dr. Stahl, as member of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Council has not yet been officially accepted, but he takes no longer any part in its transactions. He devotes his time to an elaborate work on the "Union," while his celebrated opponent, Chevalier Bunsen, has just published the first volume of his long expected translation of the Bible. Some more troubles have followed the proceedings of the General Synods of Bavaria; Count Giech, the most influential lay member of the Church and of the general synods, having been indicted by the gov ernment for publishing certain views which the royal commissary at the General Synod of Baireuth prevented him, by order of the government, from uttering before the Synod. It appears that the leading men in the Bavarian Church, though highly conservative in all political questions, intend to exert themselves strenuously for a greater independence of the Church. At the University of Erlangen, which, together with Rostock and Leipzic, is a literary stronghold of Lutheran High-Churchism, the number of theological students has risen to three hundred and twenty-five, an extraordinary increase, which indicates that the prospects of the High-Churchmen are favorable as far as the clergy are concerned. The Theological Faculty of the same university has passed the resolution that, contrary to its whole past history, and in spite of the fact that Erlangen is the only Protestant university of Bavaria, it will henceforth confer the title of D.D. only on members of the Lutheran Church. It has recently become known that Rev. W. Löhe, the leader of the extremest faction of the Bavarian High-Churchmen, has introduced in his congregation as long as two years ago a rite which substantially is the same as the sacrament of extreme unction in the Church of Rome. The Supreme Consistory of Munich, though generally agreeing with the views of Löhe, has been forced, by public opinion, to forbid this innovation. In the grand-duchy of Mecklenburg, where, likewise the restoration of a species of Protestant popery is attempted, a distinguished professor of the Theological Faculty of Rostock, Dr. Baumgarten, has been dismissed on account of doctrines which are at variance with some ducal decrees of 1552 and 1602, defining what is to be considered in the country of Mecklen

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

The Roman Church. Notwithstanding the extraordinary favors which the Roman Church continues to receive from the government of Austria, she is far from being satisfied with the progress of her influence on the people. The whole Catholic population of Austria, amounting to over thirty millions, contributed last year no more than about sixty thousand dollars for Foreign Missions. Nearly each one of the few Catholic organs of Austria has been crippled by the new press laws which have gone into effect on the first of January of the present year, while the anti-Catholic press and literature enjoys, notwithstanding all the gagging, an exuberant growth. The king of Bavaria is again accused of appointing bishops of doubtful orthodoxy. As the Catholic press of Germany is not permitted to speak on such subjects, the grievances of the ultramontane party are made public through the columns of the Univers of Paris, which, ex. gr., brought recently a

thundering article against the candidate nominated by the king for the vacant see of Regensburg. He was accused of living on friendly terms with the family of an uncle who had turned Protestant. But though the opinion of the Univers is not without influence in Rome, the charge was this time not considered sufficient to withhold his ratification, and the obnoxious candidate has, at present, entered upon his episcopal duties. From Prussia, Wirtemberg, and Baden, it is reported that the teachers of the public schools, though they are educated at the expense of the state, and receive from the state their salaries, are becoming too docile to the instruction of the Church. In Wirtemburg they refuse to meet with Protestant colleagues in common teacher's conferences. In Prussia a Conference has excluded a member because he has a Protestant wife; and in Baden one teacher has declared to the superintendent of the state, that he holds himself subject to the orders of the Church, but not to those of the state. In Wirtemberg the University of Tubingen has excluded the Faculty of Catholic Theology, because, by the new concordat, it is wholly placed under the superintendence of the bishop; the government, however, has annulled this resolution. In the Duchy of Nassau, of whose population (432,039 in 1856) nearly one half is Catholic, the ultramontane party has obtained an unusual success, its candidates for both branches of the Legislature being elected in all the purely Catholic and in most of the mixed districts.

SWITZERLAND.

The

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

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

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

SCANDINAVIA.

The

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

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

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

FRANCE.

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