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He does not despair, however; trusting that another year will not pass before the French Chambers will sweep away a prohibition which is so manifestly an inconsistency and an anachronism. The rising tide of republicanism-how strongly and surely rising the election just past evinces- will doubtless insure complete freedom of conscience and of worship before long. Though ultramontanism is strong against it, and especially bitter towards Père Hyacinthe as a pervert from Romanism, the absurd restrictions cannot be much longer maintained; and even Romanists are joining in the call for spiritual freedom. Lacordaire, the famous preacher at Notre Dame, as quoted by Hyacinthe, lately declared: "Whoever denies a single man the possession of his rights; whoever consents to the slavery of a single man, black or white, were even a hair of his head unjustly infringed on, is not a sincere man, and does not deserve to fight for the sacred causes of humanity. Yes, Catholics, listen well to this; if you wish for liberty yourselves, you must will it for all men under heaven."

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But the prospects of "Catholic Reform," meaning by that, as Père Hyacinthe and the old Catholics do, an essential recast of doctrines and methods within the Romish Church, or rather the casting off by the great Catholic body of the pretensions and abuses of Rome,- the prospects of this reform are, we fear, fading rather than brightening. The Old Catholic movement has met with overwhelming defeat in Switzerland, and seems everywhere to be losing heart and dwindling towards extinction. Bismarck is not averse, it is said, to making terms with the new Pope. The whole movement, where not political, was rational more than religious; and the new priests who succeeded to the places. vacated by ultramontanes proved, too often, a sort of spiritual carpet-baggers, who have brought about a reaction among all adherents of religion. Hyacinthe himself returned from Switzerland in disgust at the radicalism and irreligion of those who had invited him to work among them. Himself a positive believer and constructive worker, he could not long be content to work with men whose aims were unspiritual and whose work was destructive. Further than this, these lectures suggest to us another reason for the failure of existing movements for Catholic reform. The divorce from Romanism is deeper and more fundamental than these reformers perceive or can comprehend. To

give up an infallible pontiff, and yet hold to an infallible church; to dispute the authority of Rome, and yet maintain an authoritative priesthood; to clamor for the marriage of the priest, and yet keep as sacred mysteries most of the mediæval dogmas and practices of the Church; to denounce the claim of succession to the primacy of St. Peter, and yet to claim, as Hyacinthe does in these conferences, supernatural grace in the succession from the Apostles conferred in the laying on of hands, seems doubtless to the honest multitude in the Church, as it also seems to the intelligent observers without, a quarrel for the smallest fraction of a cause, a weighing of tweedle-dum against tweedle-dee. It seems to be the necessity of all reform to be partial where it is not extravagant and excessive; but this is too slight to gain the attention of conformers, or to compel the respect of rationalists.

We are not surprised, then, that Père Hyacinthe feels the loneliness of his position, as evinced in the overtures he has made to the Archbishop of Canterbury to be taken into the fellowship of the Anglican Church. If he were frankly Protestant, he could stand alone; but even the fiction of a visible Catholic Church demands adhesion to some branch of that fictitious unity. These lectures show, we think, that Père Hyacinthe will find large sympathy in dogma and ecclesiastical method with the ritualistic party of the English Church, but his spirit seems to us to belong to the nineteenth century; and it seems a pity to see him turning from the real religious issues of the day, in which he has done good service, to find some ancient bottle into which the new wine of his movement may be poured. It is not by adjusting its ecclesiasticism, but by feeding its rational faith, and touching with reverence, and turning to righteousness, its now established liberty, that he can best serve the religious life of France, and help the hope of reform for Christianity in Europe.

THINGS AT HOME AND ABROAD.

WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CHURCH.

This is the title of an address given before the Woman's Centenary Association in Providence, R.I., by Mrs. Jane L. Patterson, and published at their request in the columns of the Universalist. We should be glad to quote the whole of this admirable address. In all the subjects which it treats,- woman as missionary, as teacher, as preacher, as lecturer, as social leader, in all the phases of her higher development,- Mrs. Patterson shows a calm and just mind, a broad spirit, and an elevated style which must have won the fixed attention of her hearers.

We have only room to quote the closing sentences of her address:

I should fail of indicating the heart of woman's high privilege as a servant of Christ, if I neglected to speak of her influence in the home. She rocks the cradle of the Church when she rocks the cradle of her child. To her hand are committed its most intricate and vital interests. Before teacher or minister can come with his instructions, she can move and mould and guide. The first impressions of life and duty are received from her. She touches the fair canvas, and by the perfectness of her touch it may wear the colors of angelic life. In the home, woman should feel her responsibility and her power. By the grace of her lips and the serenity of her manner, she can hold aloft the banner of the cross, and compel respect for the Church from all who observe her upright walk. She can train her sons to reverence, and seek the same sources of strength which have made her the wise and patient guardian of a realm as difficult and as intricate to manage as the affairs of State. In many homes, woman gives her loyalty to the Church, while man is indifferent. Here is missionary ground which she should at once set about possessing. I know how natural it is to think one's husband a law unto himself, and quite removed from womanly influence, and perhaps to look upon him as almost perfect, even though he lounges at home on Sunday, and gives no heed to the high mandates of religion. No woman truly quickened by the life of the Spirit can excuse herself from endeavors to inspire her husband, her brothers, her sons, with the loves and motives which take hold of eternal things.

She should teach the law to her children, and if there is infancy where there should be the stature of a man in Christ Jesus, it is her duty to be the guide and teacher here. Men need to be quickened in their love for

the Church, in their fidelity to its teachings, and the work of consecrated and godly women is invited to this field. Do not give sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids until the head of the house acknowledges allegiance to Christ. Your own influence over childhood needs to be supplemented by hearty sanction, to have its fullest power. While the father is indifferent, or a scoffer, the son, inclined to waywardness, finds precedent in his example. Then, the home altar cannot be successfully maintained without the sympathy and assistance of both father and mother. Childhood receives its most lasting impression from the reverence that daily acknowledges God in prayer. May it never be the sorrowful portion of any of these Christian women to hear a son, who is struggling back from a wayward course, say, "If there had been prayers in my home, I never should have fallen." By your consistent life and speech, by the warmth of soul gained in devotion, by the power and pathos of entreaty, hold the men of your house to a sense of the divineness of that revelation which inspires the Church of the living God, and, if it be possible, bring them into its sheltering fold. The distractions of business engross them, and temptation comes in many ways to them of which you know nothing. Let the sacredness with which love folds you be an nvincible protection to your home, and anchor in the fathomless sea of love divine every member of your household.

THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION IN ENGLAND.

The autumnal meeting of the Congregational (Orthodox) Union of England and Wales was interesting, as all their occasions are. Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, well known to us by his fair and liberal as well as devout spirit, was the Chairman of the meeting. In his opening address, he endeavors to meet the difficulties of opposing parties in the denomination, in regard to having public formularies of faith. Here is what he says about a creed for a great assembly:

In May I expressed with exceeding explicitness my firm belief in the great doctrines of the evangelical faith. I declared my creed. Why, it has been asked me, in public and in private, should you object to a great assembly doing the same? For this simple reason: an individual can speak precisely as his conscience dictates; he can give expression to those fine shades of thought which are the record of mental processes and moral conflicts; yea, even to Gethsemane wrestlings of spirit, as Dr. Parker said, in a speech, I think, as fully charged with true thought and right feeling on a difficult subject as any speech that I ever heard. All these pass into the man's words and duly emphasize them, and they become thereby a purely spiritual power, according to the measure of their truth, in guiding and stimulating his fellows. His word exercises no pressure, imposes no yoke; it is spiritual only. Like light and heat,

it quickens and illumines just in proportion to the virtue that is in it. But let a great assembly go through the same process, and it can only deal with the truth, as it were, in the gross. All the finer shades of thought and emphasis get suppressed. The yes! yes! of a crowd, however honest, overbears spiritual things which are, in the sight of God, quite as precious as the things which it establishes; and it establishes these under a kind of weight and pressure which are fatal, in the long run, to the free and loving search of the soul for truth. A great body without meaning it - nay, it may desire earnestly to avoid it- inevitably brings a certain brute pressure to bear on the conviction which it seeks to establish. I hold that that kind of pressure has its value. It is a grand force to bring to bear on brutal bigotry or gross self-interest on the other side. In England it has been of enormous value as a factor in the forces which have won for us our political and spiritual liberties. But I am well persuaded, brethren of the independent churches, that it is a wise, sound instinct which leads us to distrust and to deprecate the use of that pressure, in matters so inward, so sacred, as the finding, the formulating, and the uttering of spiritual truth.

Let us hear what he says about ourselves:

My conviction grows with my knowledge of the subject, that ninetenths of the great sceptical movements which age after age distract the Church have, like the heresies of old time, their root in the faults and failures of the Christian society. They are mostly one-sided and shortsighted attempts to readjust a broken harmony. We have yet to measure what in the early ages, in the settlement of Christian doctrine, the Church owed to its heretics. Or take the Unitarian heresy in modern times. I I hold that the high Calvinistic theology—I do not know what moderate Calvinism means—coming perilously near, as it did to the presentation of an interior discord in the Triune Nature, which was harmonized by the Atonement, almost inevitably developed a community which could see only the Unity, and felt itself called to bear witness to that vital aspect of the truth to the world. And in the generations in which the Orthodox Church lived very much a self-infolded life, and touched the outlying world but feebly, we must remember, in justice, that the Unitarians were conspicuous by their devotion to what would now be called humanitarian objects, and rendered very noble service, as almoners and ministers, in the name of the Son of Man, at any rate, to human needs. Much of the Unitarian secession, which grew out of the narrowness of Orthodox doctrine and life, is, I believe, being reabsorbed, and will be increasingly reabsorbed, by the life of a more large-hearted, liberal, genial, truth-seeking, and sympathetic Church.

Our pride is not at all touched by what he says about our being reabsorbed into his church as it grows, to use his words, more

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