RELIGIOUS BODIES IN VICTORIA.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1356, 3 December 1872, Page 2

RELIGIOUS BODIES IN VICTORIA.

-In summing up the latest: statistics :as to the. religions of the people of Victoria the Argus says :— Supposing the people of the colony to he divided into two great sections, what woaldbe tae result ? We should have - about/ 520,000 Protestants,' and 170,000 Roman Catholicß, against a residue of about .40,000 with all sorts, of creeds, or with no creeds. Or, throwing aside the Pagans, and those who declare themselves of V. No Religion," we should bring down the residue to 20,000. rNorlis this all. If the unspecified}-; and' those objecting-, to state their religion from conscientious scruples, were excluded, 'th'e residue, would be less than 5000,, nearly one-half of whom, at the very least^ profess some form of the Christian; religion. That isso 'far satisfactory..' But one of the most striking features in thk 'return, la the fewness of the numbers of tho avowed Atheists, Deists, rand others of this class. Only 14 declare themselves Atheists, 58 Deists, 32 Theists, and 3 Infidels; There are 131 Freethinkers, 22 Secularists, 12 Rationalists, and 1 *'p Naturalists. Agustus Comte; lays claim to two disciples, and^ there ; is one Materialist. The Spirits, or Spiritualists, stand very low on the list,: as pared with their demonstrativeness. They only amount to 171, of whom 97 -are males and 74 females. ■ One ; gentleman says he is a Druid, another a Dickinite, a third a Rosicrucian, a fourth ari^-^ Original Thinker," -and f a fifth "one -of -Ihe "Peculiar People." <)ne;good lady declares that' her religion is best represented by the three letters """J s. di"-^a declaration in which she might have been appropriately followed by others, if they'had been equally honest. But we must not follow these entries further. Some are probably the result of a morbid cravihg after anything that 'caW -be considered new. in religion ; and others might have been intended as mere jokes, however dull and' ill-timed.; '. There A are few, , however, as compared with the great biil£ of the entries, and interfere little ' with ; ihe "Religions of the People" as a whole. They are mere nodosities on the surface of the .oak, neither destroying its beatity, nor impairing its usefulness. On the whole, we have much to congratulate ourselves upon in this return. : At'the lowest computation, 690,000 of the people of' Victoria; out of 73i,006 whence census was taken were on the side ofthe Christian religion— a" sufficient answer to. those who are always maundering about the spread of scepticism and infidelity.