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RUSSIA.

Religious Freedom.-One of the most notable things in modern Russian history is the Tsar's proclamation of religious liberty, if, as we trust, it will be put into actual effect. "The act of quitting the Orthodox faith to enter into any other Christian confession"-thus runs the proclamation" entails no liability to punishment or disability in personal or civil rights. Persons of age who leave the Orthodox Church will be recognized as belonging to the creed which they have embraced. If one of a married couple so change, the children under age will be considered as belonging to the parent who has not changed. When both change, all children over fourteen years of age change with them, the other children being considered as still in the original religion. Christians may cause to be baptized in their own faith all foundlings and children of unknown parentage not yet baptized." Several other imperial provisions regard schismatical or heretical bodies in the national church itself.

SWITZERLAND.

Number and Position of Catholics.-The results of the census taken in December, 1900, have but recently been published. The Catholics, who were 971,809 in 1850, now number 1,379,664; while the non-Catholics, including Jews, have increased from 1,426,797 to 1,935,779. Catholic families here also are larger than those of the wealthier Protestants. Catholics have been augmented, too, by immigration. In the canton of Geneva, the 29,764 Catholics of 1850 have gone up 67,162; the non-Catholics, from 34,713 to 65,447; but two-thirds of the Catholic increase is due to immigration, which explains their less influential position. Their growth aroused hostility, and sixty years ago a formidable secret society, the Protestant Union, was formed against them. Hence, the laws of 1872 and 1873. The religious were dispersed and their property confiscated, the Bishop was exiled, the priests deprived of their means of livelihood, and their churches given over to renegades invited from abroad. The persecution failed; and although the hostile laws remain in many cases, and fanaticism is by no means extinct, the Church, as usual, weathered the storm.

Religious Expelled. The Federal government has recently expelled the White Sisters and the Franciscan Tertiaries from Lugano. "The impression made by this ukase," says the Patria of Lugano, "has been extremely painful throughout all the cities where the victims have been known solely by the good they did amongst the people by their works of refined charity. In fact, the White Sisters took care, with love and intelligence, of the children's asylum at Massagno; of the female refuges at Lugano and Gerso, saving the children of the people from the corruption of the streets and training them in useful employments. How many fathers and mothers blessed their beneficent work!" The Franciscan Brothers were particularly occupied in the care of the sick. Hearkening to the cries of a few anticlericals, the Federal government drove them out. Meanwhile, continues the Patria, all manner of foreigners are living at Lugano, some by cheating, others by immorality, many of them guilty of offences in their own country, but the Federal government and its magistrates have no concern about them.

THE READER.

An Observer in the Philippines. By John Bancroft Devins. American Tract Society.

"Dr. Devins," says Governor Taft, in the "Foreword" of this volume, "is a Protestant clergyman, and looks at the situation from a possibly different standpoint than that of a Protestant layman "-namely, as a parson— 'or from that of a Catholic layman or a Catholic clergyman, but yet it seems to me there is very little in the book to which exception could be taken by either a Protestant layman or by a good Catholic, whether priest or parishioner."

The extent of Governor Taft's endorsement may be inferred from the opening phrase of the "Foreword." "I have examined the manuscript with as much care as I could give it in the very short time which other duties permitted." Slight as it is, however, the enterprising American Tract Society, under cover of an alleged description of the Islands, which, by the way, to a great extent is second-hand matter, has contrived to get the approval of a great representative of the Government to launch upon the world an appeal for funds in order to carry on the work of proselytizing the Catholic Filipinos. The Governor has been constituted a sort of ecclesiastical censor librorum. It is a sort of incipient union of Church and State, and the Filipinos may be led into the delusion not, of course, intended or warranted by the "Foreword," that Protestantism is the American State religion, which is not far off from the conviction of many of the parsons.

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The imprint of the American Tract Society makes it tarian in its purpose and not a mere book of travels. it, after a few perfunctory descriptions is devoted to of the Protestant sects in making use of the Aglipay troubles to upset the faith of the natives. "Dr. Stuntz," we are told on page 259, "believes that the Aglipay movement will be a great help to Protestantism," and his reason for this assertion is this: "It breaks the solid front of Romish opposition. It helps us by detaching tens of thousands of members from a nominal connection with the Church of Rome. Our preachers get a hearing with them, and hundreds accept the Word and are saved. They would never have left the Church to become Protestants, but once outside and hungry for spiritual food they hear the Word and are saved."

In pursuance of this scheme of easy salvation by which any naked Igorrote or Negrito can hear the Word and be saved, as well as the other Filipinos who are clothed and in their right mind, a conference was held in the office of the American Bible Society in the Walled City Manila, and the direct proposition was made to Aglipay to study the situation more carefully and throw his strength into the Protestant movement, and a promise was secured that he would carefully consider the question of the Word of God, marriage of the clergy and the abolition of Mariolatry."

Thus, this Aglipay trouble, which is a source of annoyance to the President and Secretary of War, is actively fomented by the efforts of parsons from the United States. If they would stop their meddling the situation would be cleared immediately. For these Filipino agitators are not clamoring for the Word of God. That is a hollow pretence. They are merely political

"strikers," hungry for place, who are quite alive to the advantage of being backed by these American evangelists, and are availing themselves of it to the fullest extent. It supplies them with funds from the gullible old ladies, male and female, of America. Thus, we have the Friar troubles all over again. Only the friars are the pale-faced parsons and not the swarthy old padres. But it must not be forgotten that the Filipinos, at least those whom the ministers patronize, hated the friars not because they were friars but because they were foreigners. How will our semi-ready Anglo Saxon friars fare if ever the natives achieve power. The war cry of "The Friars must go" may later on ring in their ears.

There is considerable imitation of the old friars by these new evangelists and one cannot help asking the meaning of this masquerade. Bishop Brent volunteers the information:

"Among the great masses of the people there is not enough intelligence to distinguish between a higher and a lower form of Christianity." Is it to help this inability to distinguish that he assumes the garb "of the lower form?" Is he following the tactics of his friend Bishop James H. Van Buren in the "Cloud Lands of Porto Rico," who informs us in the Spirit of the Missions for April, 1905, that "the people who have settled in the vicinity have brought Roman traditions with them. They have been accustomed to the ways of Rome, but they are ready to accept the Catholic doctrine which we bring them?" In consequence he actually had the audacity to hear the confessions of these poor people who were evidently under the impression they were dealing with a genuine Catholic priest, and he smugly adds: “We gave them in the Saviour's name absolution and remission of their sins which God hath commanded His ministers to declare and pronounce to His people being penitent."

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If these fiery apostles are really actuated by the desire to preach Christianity, why do they not address themselves to the reformation of their fellowcountrymen who are on the Islands, and who are apparently very much in need of being "saved?" On page 345, we read: "Protestants in Manila do not have the church-going habit. With thousands of Americans, not Roman Catholics, the three small Protestant Churches are never full. At the second service on a Sunday afternoon, fifteen persons were in the audience, including eight who were in some way connected with the Church and its official work. Never full" is a euphemism for such a vacuity: "In the Provinces there is practically no church attendance by Americans," and the writer adds, "A mission to the Americans is quite as necessary as to the Filipinos." One is tempted to say more necessary, especially as Governor Taft declares: One of the great obstacles that this Government has to contend with is the presence in a large majority of the towns of the archipelago of dissolute, drunken and lawless Americans who are willing to associate with low Filipino women, and live on the proceeds of their labor. They are truculent and dishonest. They borrow, beg, and steal from the natives. Their conduct and mode of life are not calculated to impress the native with the advantage of American civilization. When opportunity offers, however, they are loudest in denunciation of the Filipinos as an inferior, lying race." Would it not be a praiseworthy work for the parsons to look after these derelicts before exploiting the Filipinos, who probably cannot make head or tail out of their discordant presentations of Protestantism, or if they grasp anything, laugh at it? In any case, the concluding phrase of Governor Taft's philippic furnishes a very valuable criterion for estimating the correctness of the constant diatribes we are getting about Philippine morality.

The Spirit of Sacrifice. By Rev. S. M. Giraud, Priest of Our Lady of La Salette. Benziger, New York. $2.00 net.

This ascetical treatise is written especially for religious communities. The author calls it the Spirit of Sacrifice, because the religious is intended to be largely a propitiatory and impetratory victim; a spiritual condition which is especially needful, he reminds us, in the times in which we live. The work is professedly based on Rodriguez and St. Jure, and the translation, for such it is, has been revised by Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J. In the chapter on "Manifestation of Conscience," the censor appends as a note, the decree Quemadmodum of Leo XIII, who ordered Superiors of Sisters and Laybrothers not to demand manifestation of conscience from their subjects, though permitting their subjects, if they so desire, to make their troubles known. The faults, however, laid down in the body of the chapter as subject-matter of such manifestation, are very little beyond the accusations of defects made in Chapter; the writer very properly saying that there are faults of a certain nature which it would be inexpedient, at least as a rule, to mention otherwise than in confession. Leaving out the clause "at least as a rule," the doctrine of the book seems to avoid the censure conveyed in the decree. The book is divided into four parts, and deals with the Motives of Religious Life, Novitiate, Vows and Community Life, covering thus the entire ground.

Cantate Mariæ. By David Bearn, S.J. Burns & Oates. $1.00 net. This little book, as its name implies, is devoted to singing the praises of Our Blessed Lady. It is all worth reading, but Father Bearn seems to be at his best with his imagery and thought when his verse flows most rapidly. For instance, we have in Our Lady Love:

Through all the storms, thy name the throstle trilled

From topmost finial of the budding larch,

While breath of opening violets filled

The dolorous winds of March.

Of thee the ousel's Easter carol rang

Within the milk-white pear and cherry bloom,
Until the silver rain of evening sang
From out the April gloom.

The blossom falls, a shower of perfumed snow,
As on the whitethorn bough the birds alight;
Faint shadows of thy sweetness come and go,
From morn till moonlit night.

Again in Our Lady of the Fountain, we have:

Wren and linnet, lark and mavis join in chorus high;
All the budding bell-like blossoms swing in mute reply;
Chant of Sext from priestly voices in the cloister nigh.
Mirth and music laughing, ringing all that sunlit day,
Night stars look into the garden where the viols play,

Drowning chords of nobler music where the pale monks pray.

The London Tablet has already complimented the author on the cleverness which could describe in verse such exhilarating piety as we find in Our Lady of the Boys; the statue, namely, in a play ground where the boys come to pray:

She is so fair and white and sweet,
This gentle Queen and Mother Maid;
The players in the games full heat,

In spirit seek her hallowed shade,
Longing if but for one wee space,

To leave the laughter and the noise,
And whisper, "Mary, full of grace,
Our Lady of the Boys!"

The Transplanting of Tessie. By Mary T. Waggaman. Benziger, New York.

60 cents.

Miss Waggaman tells, with her usual skill, an interesting story of a little girl who, after passing her very early life in a convent, adapts herself to the new conditions into which she is thrown when her Protestant relatives assume charge of her. Little Joe's sickness, and the two encounters with the outlaw, give a great deal of pathos to the narrative.

The Apple of Eden. By E. Temple Thurston. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

We do not wish to review this book; first, because of the book itself, and, secondly, because of its publishers who had given the impression by their Encyclopædia, that they were unwilling to put on the market statements offensive to Catholics. Possibly they are unaware of it, but this book offends grievously. Its choice of theme, its situations, its suggestions, its doctrine, its conclusions, are all calculated to irritate extremely. Nor is there anything in the book to recommend it artistically. There is no delineation of character; no descriptive power; no skill exercised in the narration; nothing but the ugly and distasteful subject to hold the attention of the morbid reader. We were under the impression that better powers of discernment were employed in the choice of books.

Mrs. Darrell. By Foxcroft Davis. Macmillan Co., London. $1.50.

It is to be hoped Mrs. Darrell is not a type of American women. Elizabeth Brandon at first, she marries offhand an English officer whom her stupid old father introduced to her on the street; their mutual acquaintance before that being of about five minutes duration. She sails with Darrell to India. With them is Darrell's friend Pelham. Mrs. Darrell falls in love with him. When the situation is becoming perilous the husband promptly dies, Pelham, being away at the time, cannot be communicated with, and love for him turns to hate. Mrs. Darrell then returns to America and falls in love with a rascally American Senator named Clavering, who is expelled from the Senate and who proposes to her to divorce his ignorant old wife in order to marry; a little matter of three thousand dollars which Mrs. D. stands in need of, helping her to decide. Pelham arrives in time, the Senator is dismissed and Mrs. Darrell becomes Mrs. Pelham. Poor Pelham.

Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles.

From St. Joseph's College, Philadelphia, comes an elaborate volume with the alternate pages in Greek and English, giving the text of this great play of Sophocles. A most distinguished success attended the presentation of this drama, and this splendid book was published to enable the audience to follow the actors, all students of St. Joseph's College, who presented the tragedy to the public in the language in which it was originally written.

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