RELIGIOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 859, 17 August 1888, Page 7

RELIGIOUS.

REBELLION AND RUSSIA,

The moral, political, and social discontent seething in the heart of the rural population of Russia has found a sort of safety-valve in the new evolution of religious thought which nowadays covers almost the whole field of the intellectual activity of the Russian labouring classes. Almost the whole moral and intellectual force produced by the modern Russian peasantry runs in the channel of religion ; religion engrosses the leading minority of the people who understand most thoroughly and feel most keenly the evils of the day, and who alone would be able to pat themselves at the head of any vast popular movement. That religion should play this partof intercessor.between popular discontent and its logical outcome—open rebellion—is all the more natural and unavoidable, inasmuch as our new popular religions are not merely a protest against, but to some extent a cure to, the' evils against which the popular conscience is the most indignant. The religious enthusiasm proper to all new aectß has°re-established- -for a time at least—more : fraternal relations between those men who adhere to them, and has subdued the fierce and cynical struggle for economical predominance which ia raging in our villages.—‘Ruseian Peasantry,’ by Stcpniair, METHODISM. The growth of the Methodist Church may be classed among the remarkable spiritual phenomena that have helped to make up the record of history. Originally a protest against i's corrupt and enervated condition of . religious, life and the < substitution of character which shows; itself by example - for formalism, it; rapidly'developed ipto ip 'organised system' ’of worship, with” a clearly defined law and a dicipline. The unlettered circuit. !i ■rider, like the hardy frontiersman, cut out a path in the forest and laid the foundation of ■a 1 fabric symmetrical in its proportions, and ■affording ample room for the expansion of thought. Emotional at first, appealing rnoie to the feelings than to the intellect, its prohnoters 36011 learned that the weapons with which it ; soughb to fight must be keen and polished, and ■ that speculative philosophy arid critical lirgnifteut must -be oppbsed by forces equally powerful. The result has been that it has called to its aid education, art, and learning; that ic has built schools, endowed universities, and fitted- its teachers to cope with' trenchant h%'c ' arid analytical reasoning.—Philadelphia Record. DECAY OF CALVINISM IN WALES. At the customary Whitsuntide festival of the Welsh. Calvinistio Methodists of Liver, pool and distriofc, attention was directed to

the ‘ Address to the Churches,’ prepared by the Rev. J. Hughes, D.D., in the vernacular. It is oomposed of expressions of regret at the decay of Galvanism under every heading. The statistics read showed that in Liverpool city and district there were 33 chapels and school rooms, 22 churches, 20 ministers, 11 local preachers, 104 elders, and 6,174 communicants. There were 34 Sunday schools and 700 teachors, the number of scholars being 3,052, and children under fifteen years of age 2,909 The estimated number of adherents ia 11 678—being a decrease during the year of 156. The total of priblio and church collections was £9,800, or a decrease of £1,165. The foregoing does not include the statistics of the Welsh home mission stations of Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumberland, and Durham, or those for the English ohurclies iu Liverpool and district, which aro included in the report of the English Presbytery of Lancashire and Cheshire,