independent churches of Geneva, Vaud, and Neuchatel, we mention the Moravian Brethren, who are numerous in the canton of Neuchatel, and the Wesleyan Methodists, who are spread through eastern Switzerland, and above all in Zurich.

The Swiss Evangelical Union, which under different names counts ten sections, is one of the most powerful and active agents in spreading the gospel in Switzerland. It endeavors to have it understood, especially in German cantons, that it does not undertake founding an independent church. At Berne, for example, one of its sections, which bears the name of Evangelical Society, undertakes a large number of local committees in villages throughout the country. These committees have built halls where reunions of every kind are held. The twenty-five laborers of the society are under the direction of an inspector, and our brothers of Berne credit themselves with having started "the week of preaching." When one of the local committees makes a request, and only then, an evangelist is sent who during one week preaches every evening, and the effects of such efforts have been greatly blessed. By the side of this the National Evangelical Union at Berne has other most diverse methods of work preaching occasionally or at regular times, as at Geneva, where the society has pastors in its own service; Biblical instruction for young men who are to become evangelists; Sunday-schools; meetings of prayer and mutual edification; publications; journals. All these exist and develop from day to day.

Societies of internal missions founded especially in large cities have a right to our mention, such as the work of popular evangelization, whose object is to announce the word of God in very simple form, often by the mouth of the laity, and in places easily accessible, and for those who are repulsed by the name of church. The Sunday-schools are now united in an association which has its journals and its general conferences. They become all the more necessary and important as the daily school is more and more closed to the gospel. Christian unions of young men and of young women are spread through the country,

and it is at Geneva that exists the International Committee of Christian Associations. From all sides efforts are multiplied, and one can affirm that if unbelief is more open and aggressive than for thirty or forty years, the defenders of the faith are also more numerous and more aggressive.

It would be unjust to forget influences which, although not having evangelization, so-called, for an end, are, however, the fruit of the gospel because they are inspired by it. The society for the preservation of the Sabbath has reached the ear of authorities, and certainly it is to its action that we owe many laws that have given the rest of the Sabbath to manufactories and to works of public service, such as the post office and railroads.

Temperance societies make most joyful progress in Switzerland, directed by men who for the greater part are Christians, although they do not pretend to be religious organizations. This spring they numbered 6800 members, of which 640 were formerly drinkers. They also publish numerous journals and brochures. The societies now occupy themselves among students, knowing well the influence that a habit of drinking exerts over them. We would also speak of the associations which work for the moral health of our people in hindering the spread of immoral literature which is brought from abroad. We cannot too greatly applaud their efforts, as each day brings in new proofs of the ravages that certain romances and journals make among all classes.

It is not possible to close these reflections upon the religious state of Protestant Switzerland without saying a word of the theological crisis which exists in all the churches. During the past few years the churches of Vaud and of Neuchatel especially have been agitated by grave dissensions on Christology and upon the principle of authority. Their debates have shown that the majority of the theologians who have any authority in our churches belong to what is called the new school, and have in consequence rejected many points of belief and of methods of traditional orthodoxy.

We have so far only spoken of Protestant Switzerland, or at least of those cantons in which Protestants are in the majority, and it now remains to say a few words in reference to Catholic Switzerland. There are in the country two Catholicisms, the National and the Liberal, or Ancient, Catholicism, which has at its head a bishop. The latter in Geneva merely vegetates, and would certainly entirely disappear were the support of the state withdrawn from it. It is indeed due to political power rather than to religious conviction that National Catholicism really exists.

If one judges of the increase of Protestantism and of Ca

tholicism merely numerically, the advantage is certainly in favor of the latter, and their increase is of such a nature as to give serious thought to Protestants. The causes of this increase are very varied. In the first place there is immigration. Switzerland is surrounded by Catholic countries only. Wurtemberg is its only Protestant neighbor, and under such circumstances it is easily seen that the majority of workmen and other strangers who come to settle in the country are Catholic. At Geneva the larger part of the population is Catholic, and the absolute condition imposed by the church of Rome that the children of mixed marriages should be educated and brought up Catholics is greatly in favor of that church. Another cause of their increase is the opposition that radical Protestant governments have shown against Catholics. Everything which approaches persecution immediately kindles the zeal of those who, without it, had never shown a great attachment to their church.

Another much more grave cause is the state of Protestantism itself and the view which it presents to the outside world. Without doubt its absolute dogmatic liberty, its formal opposition to all ecclesiastical authority, its absence of any narrow binding confession of faith, may have some advantage, and may give to each man a more personal conviction of faith in obliging him to ask himself, What are the foundations of my belief? But what can be more astonishing to a feeble or troubled soul than to hear on two consecutive Sundays and in two neighboring churches contradictory doctrines preached? Will it not feel unsettled at the sight of startling religious inventions? And each. year there seems to be a new one, and that their apostles preach with an equal assurance, whether they may be officers of the Salvation Army or Seventh-day Adventists, adepts of perfect sanctification or of faith healing. When to this disquieted soul is presented a church with its dogmas perfectly defined, religious forms strictly regulated, an imposing exterior, unity; when this church offers to it a certain means of safety and of coming out of the indecisions which torment it, oh, will it not run to it as to a refuge where it hopes to find peace and the rest for which it longs? Culpable weakness do you call it? An unpardonable abdication of its will and of its spiritual liberty? Nothing more true; but let us confess, we Protestants, that if the career of

Catholicism progresses and develops with a surprising facility, it is we that have prepared the way for it.

May God keep us from this double danger, from unbelief and from error! And for this holy war against the adversaries of the gospel God himself calls many soldiers to whom he will say, as to Gideon, "Go with this power that thou hast. . . . Is it not I that send thee?"

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND THE STATE.

BY REV. JAMES M. KING, D.D., OF NEW YORK.

DEFINITION OF LIBERTY.

CHATEAUBRIAND said: "Every one desires liberty, but it is impossible to say what it is."

Liberty, applied to political man, practically means protection. or checks against undue interference from individuals, from masses, or from government.

True liberty is a positive force, regulated by law; false liberty is a negative force, a release from restraint. True liberty is the moral power of self-government.

Lieber said: "I mean by civil liberty that liberty which plainly results from the application of the general idea of freedom to the civil state of man, that is, to his relations as a political being, a being obliged by his nature and destined by his Creator to live in society. Civil liberty is the result of man's twofold character, as an individual and a social being, so soon as both are equally respected. The end which is to be reached, and towards which all liberty and political civilization tend, is perfect liberty of conscience."

THE RELATIONS OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

Religious liberty is the most convincing test of free institutions and of the genuine character of civil liberty.

Civil liberty has never materially advanced and never has become satisfactorily secure except as it has been preceded by the recognition of man's right to religious liberty.

"Civil liberty requires for its support religious liberty, and cannot prosper without it." Religious liberty "is freedom in