I find time failing me to tell at length of the services at St. Augustin, a splendid church near the Madeleine, where I hear M. l'Abbé Reinhard de Liechty has been delivering a "magnifique sermon education of children, in which he said children must be educated in the love of God, and of their country, as they would one day have to guard it from the barbarous doctrine that there existed neither a native country nor a God. This abbé is a young man, and is said to express himself most admirably. The day I was at St. Augustin the congregation was small, but it was afternoon. The churches of St. Eugène, St. Louis, St. Paul, St. Vincent-de-Paul, St. Laurent, and many others, deserve a passing word, had I time. But I must speak of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, at which I attended last Sunday morning, but only in time to hear a number of notices read over. At this church the bell was rung which announced the commencement of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It is at the end entrance of the Louvre, and worth a visit for its associations and its beauty.

While much that I have seen suggests a considerable number of worshippers in the Paris churches, from La Semaine Religieuse, now in its nineteenth year, I gather that the grass is not allowed to grow under the feet of the priests. The special services, as we should call them, for the coming week are announced. Schools are down for exercise at 4 p.m. on Monday, and at the same hour on Tuesday for young girls, by the “first vicar of the parish." Mass and meditation are entered for most evenings, and a sermon to end the whole. The Rev. William Gibson, a well-known Wesleyan minister in Paris, tells of a visit to Creil after the war, and of overhearing a priest giving a Bible lesson to a

"SPECIAL SERVICES" IN THE CHURCH OF ROME. 341

number of youths. He says it was the best Bible lesson he ever heard. The doctrines of the Trinity, the humanity of Christ, and redemption through Him, were taught in a simple and beautiful manner. But, he adds, "as is always the case in Roman Catholic churches, the pure doctrine was spoiled by the dragging in of Romish additions. The poor children were made at the close to join in a prayer to the Virgin Mary." "I was reminded," he goes on to say, "of a splendid sermon I heard one week-evening in the Cathedral of Avignon. The subject was the Judgment, and so powerful and faithful was the preaching that we were all brought in imagination before the great white throne. The like of it on that subject I have never heard. The priest concluded the sermon by an exhortation to the people to bring flowers for the following Sunday to decorate the image of the Virgin." I was reminded of these extracts by reading among the list of excellent "special services" a notice that at St. Roch during the service there would be a veneration of the relics of St. Denis, the Saint to whom is attributed the feat of carrying his head in his hands after martyrdom. A similar notice I have read at Nôtre Dame, where the relics are both rare and coarse. These relics are the stumbling blocks of the hommes de lettres of France.

To meet the wants of foreigners instruction en la langue Anglaise and in other tongues is frequently given. There is also a mission Anglaise, at the Church of St. Joseph, worked by the Pères Passionists, for the English and the Irish. There is Mass every day (tous les jours) at seven, eight, and nine, and on Sundays at ten, with a sermon, prayers, and benediction at three in the afternoon, and it is added-"The confessionals are opened each day at six in the morning."

While on these topics I may cull a few more items so as to obtain an idea of the inner life of the Romish Church at Paris. A conference is to be held every Sunday evening at St. Nicolas des Champs, at eight in the evening, upon some of the "fundamental verities of religion-the nave exclusively reserved for men." How suggestive! Men are really going to church at 8 p.m. to talk on the verities of religion! On Wednesday, at 8 a.m., Mass is to be said in connection with the "death of the unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette." Another on the occasion of the anniversary of the heroic death of the commandant Picot de Dampierre, killed at the head of the mobiles at the attack of Bagneut.

But I must defer telling you more until my next.

LETTER LV.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM IN PARIS.

PARIS, October.-The Church of Rome has a great hold on the common people, both by law and custom. A case has just been decided at Lyons which the Romish organ says is a "satisfaction to the law and the conscience." A divorce has been pronounced by the civil courts against a man whose wife complained he would not allow their children to be baptised. The court decided that while a divorce would not be granted for such a cause if the woman was actually warned by her husband before marriage of his intention not to allow his children to be baptised; it would be granted where such a positive declaration was withheld, even though he had refused to go to confession on his marriage day, and his wife had been informed that he was a libre-penseur, or free-thinker.

On All Saints' Day, the religious feeling of Paris, from the centre to the circumference, is evoked, and the public cemeteries show the feeling on the day after-le jour des morts-All Souls' Day, in a surprising manner. There ready this week for Sunday.

are pilgrimages getting Cemeteries closed all the

year will then be open, and Père-La-Chaise may this year have its 100,000 visitors again, and Montmartre its 25,000 or 30,000. The necropolises of the North, East, and of the Middle, and the extra-mural ones, will have their full share, and amid pretty trees, luxuriant vegetation, tombs, monuments, and crypts will be visited by families and friends, even when no tie of relationship binds them. Père-La-Chaise sends most people into a rhapsody-I care not to see it again. It is a collection of poor peddling gimcrackery in the way of tombs; it is a permanent exhibition of immortelles, images, and neglected shrines. In the warmth of affection evoked by a sudden or an early death, a tomb is raised, a little parlour preserved for the mourner, and immortelles hung around. The surviving widow or widower gets married, love cools, removals take place, death clears off the survivors, and the empty chair gets dirty and rotten, and the flowers, even if artificial, fade, and all around suggest "like a dead man out of mind." Commend me to one good block of Aberdeen granite, with its "born" and its "died," and nothing else. The cemeteries of Auteuil, of Passy, from which a most beautiful panorama of Paris is to be had, and of Clichy, Cayenne, and D'Ivry, are much frequented by the Parisians on the Day of the Dead. Each cemetery has its own hero, and its own crowd of worshippers. Even Nero found a loving hand to decorate his grave. So do the most dubious heroes of France.

Now a word on the personnel of the Romish Church in Paris. First of all, let me say, the clergy of all the churches here are more gentlemanly in their intercourse with their rivals than at home. When the Archbishop, the curé of the Madeleine, and other