ing the conditions of the metaphor somewhat, Peter says: "As new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." If the grace of infancy never comes forth to maturity, let the Church and the parent, to whom belong the planting, the watering, and the pruning, well consider it. God gives no "increase" but according to established laws. "They that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." The one talent never increased, because never used. 5. On the metaphysics, or mere abstract possibilities of the question, whether a child can grow up in a regenerate state, without ever forfeiting its infantile state of grace, we have not hitherto proposed to enter, considering that form of the question more curious than practical. Standing on the immutable declaration of Christ, we say: "Except, Tic, any person be born again-born, es vεμaтоs, by the Spirit-he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." And standing on the ground laid down in this argument, everywhere recognized in Scripture, we say that this grace denoted by regeneration is available to our humanity at every period of its existence. Nay more, if any one period of our life is more susceptible of grace than another, it is that of childhood; and if the faithful use of religious instrumentality has greater promise of success at one period than another, it is that of our earlier consciousness. The child may sin and repent without any greater forfeiture of its antecedent, unconditional justification, than the adult believer incurs who is "overtaken with a fault" and is "restored." Sin and grace in such instances are both in proportion only to the moral development of the child. The parent, in laying down the obligation of repentance to the child, is not required to go back of its personal consciousness. It should, indeed, be taught to confess the sinfulness of its nature, like David, who, says Calvin, "commences the confession of his depravity at the time of his conception." Psa. li, 5. It should so confess, because this fallen nature is the perpetual occasion of departing from God, and in itself offensive to his holiness, and in yielding to it we seem to adopt and approve it, and thus make it, in a sense, our personal offense. Yet the Christian life and warfare may be successfully carried on, and a state of favor, and increasing favor with God, maintained through all the stages of childhood. 6. In conclusion of this brief article, we go back and plant our feet upon the last projecting verge of prophetic utterance in the Old Testament, and endeavor, with Malachi, to lift the warning voice against the remissness of the Church in regard to family religion. Behold," says God, "I send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.' Does this prophecy look forward to the restoration of the primitive, religious order of the family? No other construction is easy, natural, and consonant to all the connecting facts. To give the particle translated "to," the sense of with, and read it, "the hearts of the fathers with their children," as indicating that whole families, fathers and children together, were to be turned, is a possible sense, and would imply the order of family religion. But this gives not the force of the passage. It is well enough translated in the common English; or, perhaps, we should take its more radical sense of down upon, as we find it in 2 Kings xiv, 1: "The king's heart was upon Absalom." This setting "the heart of the father upon the child, and the heart of the child upon the father," with reference to religious ends and religious duties; this turning family affections and interests into their proper channel, and making them subservient to their original ends, namely, to secure "a godly seed;" this is the point of the prophet's utterance. Church reformation begins with family reformation. "Every man should build over against his own house." The religious claims of the children must first be looked after. This prophecy is of such marked significance that it is quoted in the Apocrypha, (Eccl. xlviii, 10,) where the "turning of the father to the son" is the means of averting divine judgments, and "restoring the tribes of Israel;" and is also repeated as the first prophetic announcement of the New Testament. Luke i, 17. The awful import of these words rolled their solemn reverberations through the fallen Jewish Church, who, by their human traditions, had unsettled the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, and thus "made void the law of God;" and they reach down to us, and will forever stand like a beacon fire on the walls of a godless Church and family. "That thy days may be long in the land," is the blessing promised; "Lest I smite the land with a curse," is the malediction threatened. Let the Church see to it. ART. VIII.-FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. GREAT BRITAIN. The Protestant Churches.-THE REVIVAL MOVEMENTS have continued also during the last three months in England, Ireland, and, though to a lesser extent, in Scotland. From England, in particular, it is reported that there is scarcely a town where special prayer-meetings are not held for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Yet fewer reports of special interest have been received, and the physical manifestations, which at first drew so much attention, have been diminished. The demand for publications on the revival of religion is very great, and "The Revival," a four paged quarto, giving news of the progress of the awakening in the United Kingdom, has a circulation of not less than twentyfive thousand weekly. An interesting discussion on the revivals took place at the last London quarterly meeting of the Unitarians, almost all the speakers regarding them as being brought about by the direct and immediate agency of the Holy Spirit of God. THE SPECIAL SERVICES FOR THE WORKING CLASSES are again held in a number of larger churches, and in order to reach these classes better, a committee of gentlemen-Churchmen and Dissenters -decided on hiring from the lessees several of the low theaters in the more densely populated portions of London for Sunday evening services. The experiment, commenced on December 18, has been, so far, quite successful. A case of high importance, concerning the RELATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE, is still pending before the law courts of Scotland. On the appeal of Mr. Miller, the minister of Cardross, who had been deposed by the General Assembly of the Free Church for attempting to interpose the civil courts between him and discipline, the judges called on the assembly to produce in court the constitution of their Church, on which they claimed the right to depose him. This the Church refused to do, denying the jurisdiction of the court. On December 23 the court unanimously repelled the preliminary defenses for the Free Church, ordaining them to satisfy the production, and finding them liable in the expenses of process since the preliminary defenses were lodged. On January 18 a special meeting of the Commission of the General Assembly of the Free Church was convened, to consider the steps to be taken in consequence of the decision of the court. The report recommended to satisfy production in terms of the order of the Court of Session, the Church always being prepared to resist any attempt of the court to make use of this act for reviewing the ecclesiastical procedure, connected with the sentence produced. This resolution was unanimously adopted. In England, it is especially the Church Rates question which continues to agitate the public mind with regard to the relation between Church and State. The Church Defense Association held recently a great meeting at Bath, where one of the speakers pronounced upon "the utter inefficiency of the voluntary principle wherever it had been tried," while another expressed the belief that the Wesleyan Methodists would not join in the movement for the abolition of the Church Rate. ing of the Episcopal bench, recently held At a private meetin compliance with an earnest invitation from the Primate, it was unanimously resolved to oppose any change. Among other questions agitated in the Church of England we mention only the MOVEMENT AGAINST THE ALTERATION OF THE LITURGY, as proposed by Lord Ebury. A circular signed by Dr. Trench, Dr. Jelf, and others, has been distributed among the clergy with a view of calling forth an explicit declaration of their opinion on this question. THE WESLEYAN METHODISTS of England and Ireland differ in their opinion on the education question. Both bodies have formerly been opposed to the Irish National Board of Education. But at the last Irish Conference, in June 1859, a majority decided that the Wesleyan schools might be placed under the control of the commissioners, while the committee to which the English Conference, in Manchester, had referred this question, adopted, at its meeting in November, a resolution affirmative of the former principles of the Methodists on the subject. The Roman Catholic Church.MEETINGS IN FAVOR OF THE POPE and the preservation of his temporal sovereignty, have been held all over Ireland and in many towns in England. But it has been observed that the participation in them has been neither so general, nor so enthusiastic as was expected, and that several Roman Catholics of influence declared themselves opposed to these demonstrations. THE PRESENT STATISTICS of the Roman Church in England and Scotland are stated by the London Catholic Directory for 1860 as follows: Churches, chapels, and stations in England, 767; in Scotland, 183. Priests in England, 1,077; in Scotland 154. Colleges in England, 10, of which three are conducted by Jesuits; in Scotland, 3. Religious houses and communities of men, 37; Convents, 123. GERMANY, PRUSSIA, AUSTRIA. The Protestant Churches.-THE DISSATISFACTION OF THE HUNGARIAN PROTESTANTS with the new Imperial Patent of Sept. 1 has proved to be almost general, and their opposition to the carrying through of the new Church constitution much more decided and energetic than the Austrian government anticipated. The convocations of the old superintendent districts, though abolished by the new constitutions, have assembled as usual, in spite of the direct prohibition of the Austrian government, and entered their protest against the right assumed by the government to change the constitution of a Protestant Church. The most important of these convocations was that at Debrezim, held on January 11, which was also attended more numerously than any other yet held on the Imperial Patent. The summons of the Imperial commissary to disperse, met with a resolute refusal; the chairman declaring that, by the law of Hungary, they had an undoubted right to assemble to make such a protest, that that right they were determined to exercise, and that if force were employed they would have recourse to force. The presiding officers of one of these convocations have been sentenced to imprisonment. A deputation, consisting of two distinguished noblemen, which was sent to Vienna to lay their petition for the restoration of their legal rights in the hands of the emperor, was not received by the emperor, while a private audience, offered to them as individuals, was declined by them. At last the government seems, however, to have been intimidated by the determined attitude of the Hungarians. On Febru ary 1 the two chairmen of the Protestants were invited to an audience by the emperor, who declared himself willing to redress the grievances of the Protestants. The deputation hit upon a plan which would remove the greatest difficulties, without compelling the government to expressly revoke the patent. The government consented to this plan, but the Protestant conference of Pesth did not indorse the transactions of their deputation, and insisted that the eight old district convocations must meet once more, in order to sanction the proposed expedient. It is generally believed that the Protestants will soon carry their point. In PRUSSIA the question of a reorganization of the Church is again ventilated. Several clergy and laymen of Berlin, mostly belonging to the school of Schleiermacher, lately presented a petition to the Prince Regent, praying for the convocation of a general synod for the purpose of drawing up a Church constitution. The Prince Regent, in his reply, countersigned by Herr von Bethman Hollweg, assured the petitioners that it is his wish to convoke a general synod as soon as it will be feasible, but that at present he does not consider the Church ripe for such a movement, and therefore a gradual progress in that direction preferable. The Roman Catholic Church.THE CONCORDAT WITH BADEN is at present the most exciting theme in Germany. Its publication has given rise to a very extensive agitation. The court, the ministers of the state, and the higher aristocracy side, in this question, with Rome, while nearly the whole population of the large towns, both Catholic and Protestant, nearly the whole press, and the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg, stand on the other side. The unanimity with which the University of Freiburg has pronounced itself has exceeded the general expectation. Eighteen of the twenty-one ordinary professors who do not belong to the theological faculty, and both the two extraordinary professors, have drawn up a promemoria regarding the "freedom of teaching," which they maintain will be annihilated should the following clause in the Concordat, "Whenever the archbishop deems that any teacher in the university, it matters not to what faculty he belong, puts forth in his lectures anything not in accordance with the dogmas of the Catholic Church, the grandducal government pledges itself to give, on application, all needful aid for the removal of the grievance," pass into law. A meeting of Protestant clergy and laity was held at Durlach for discussing the best means of protecting the rights of the Protestant Church, and it has created much bad feeling that the seven members of the committee appointed by this meeting, have been required by the government to give an account of themselves. One of the passages which are most obnoxious to the laity of both (Protestant and Roman) Churches, is the provision on mixed marriages, according to which no Protestant pastor dare perform the marriage ceremony where one of the parties is a Roman Catholic, without a direct license from the parish priest. In some towns, as Heidelberg and Manheim, a large majority, even of the Roman Catholic population, have signed the petitions against the Concordat. It is generally understood that not above six or eight members of the second chamber, and not more than four of the first, will vote for the Concordat, While this proves conclusively that Rome has not yet regained a firm hold of the Roman Catholic population of Baden, the ADDRESSES OF SYMPATHY TO THE POPE have been signed very numerously in Prussia, where, as is now generally conceded, the attachment of the Roman Catholic population to the Church is stronger than in any other part of Germany. The address of the diocese of Cologne has been signed by 155,000 men, that of Breslau by 106,000, and in the other Prussian dioceses the signatures are equally numerous. The eight archbishops and bishops of Prussia have also prayed the Prince Regent of Prussia, in a joint address, to protect the rights of the pope as a legitimate sovereign. The union heretofore existing in the second chamber of the Prussian Parliament between the ministerial and the Roman Catholic parties has been dissolved, and consequently the leader of the latter party has not been reelected first vice-president of the chamber. The Catholic party in the second chamber counts at present forty-two members. considerable number of the Roman Catholic members do not belong to it. SCANDINAVIA. A The Protestant Churches.-The Parliaments of all the three Scandinavian kingdoms have been occupied with the discussion of questions partly changing the ECCLESIASTICAL LEGISLATION. In Sweden a bill brought in by the government, and proposing some mitigations of the intolerant old code, is likely to be adopted. It is, however, much less liberal than the propositions made to the diet by the late King Oscar. In Norway a Church committee, consisting of one bishop, two provosts, two pastors, two lawyers, and two countrymen, which was appointed on January 27, 1859, has recommended the election of vestries in every congregation, and a revision of the legislation of divorces. In Denmark the draft of a new constitution has been submitted by the government to the diocesan conventions of the clergy. Public opinion in Denmark continues to pronounce itself decidedly in favor of an entire separation of Church and State, and motions to this effect have again been made in the diet. The Free Churches advance rapidly. The Baptists in Sweden, in spite of the incessant persecution, have increased to more than three thousand. The Methodist Episcopal Church in Norway and Denmark has six congregations, with more than four hundred members. In Norway also the Free Apostolic Church, founded by Pastor Lammers, is advancing; and in Denmark the number of the Free Lutheran congregations increases. The Roman Catholic Church.GREAT EFFORTS are made by the Roman missionaries, especially in the province of literature. Though their membership in all Scandinavia counts only a few thousand, they have started, during the past year, their third periodical, a political weekly. Recently, also, a history of the Roman Church in Denmark, from 828 to 1536, has been published by a Roman Catholic author, which attracts some attention, because it is, as yet, the only historical work on this period in the Danish language. In Copenhagen a free school has been established, where poor children receive not only free instruction, but also support, on which account it is visited also by many poor Protestant children. FRANCE. The Protestant Church.-THE LANGUAGE OF THE LEADING FRENCH PERIODICALS on Protestant affairs is attracting considerable attention. The Revue des Deux Mondes, the most thorough of all French papers, has brought out during the last year several articles in which a grand future is prophesied to the Protestant Church. An article of Emile Montegut on the works of Madame Gasparin remarks: "Noble Church, which in the midst of universal enfeeblement numbers yet so many loyal and valiant souls! Courage! In one way or another a grand future is reserved for you!" Similar are the senti ments of Prevost Paradol, one of the assistant editors of the Journal des Debats. He has recently published a new edition of |