Passing Notes.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 May 1884, Page 3

Passing Notes.

Mr. Herbert Spencer writes to the « London Athenaeum,' complaining of the inexcusable misrepresentations made by the Duke of Argyll in criticising his (Spencer's) Data of Ethics. He says that the Duke, in his book entitled The Unity of Nature, puts in quotation-marks sentences which bear not even a remote resemblance to any sentence which he himself had used. Mr. Spencer asks it the Duke can contend that this course is defensible.

The bill now before the Massachusetts Legislature with reference to admitting the testimony of atheists in courts reads thus : —" Section seventeen of chapter one hundred and sixty-nine of the Public Statutes is hereby amended by striking out the following words : ' and the evidence ol such person's disbelief in the existence of God may be received to affect his credibility as a witness.'" This amendment has already passed the Senate, and is likely to become law.

The Freethought Conference brought under review a question of the first importance when it passed a resolution in favor of a Bill being introduced in the Assembly to provide for the incorporation of Societies, such as the Freethought ./Federal Union and the Associations of which it consists. The Bill should be general in its scope so as to include all bodies desiring incorporation. It would inspire confidence if Mr Stout drafted a short measure of the kind and entrusted it to some competent member of the Legislature.

We have received a pamphlet on " Taxation of Church property" published by the Boston Free Religion Association, and issued by our indefatigable friend " Blue Pencil," who has caused a copy to be sent to each Freethought Association in New Zealand. The pamphlet describes the position of Church property in the United States and urges the danger of allowing it to accumulate in enormous quantities through its exemption from taxation. The action of our friend is opportune, the Associations of the Colony being about to move the Legislature to alter the law.

The Pope lately held a congregation of cardinals, whom he informed that he had consigned to the Secret Archives, for the information of posterity, a detailed account of his conversation with the Crown Prince of Germany. It would be only fair that the Prince should have been allowed to make his notes of the conversation to accompany the Pope's version into the Archives. For notwithstanding infallibility, the version of His Holiness will be a one-sided affair and posterity will only be impartially informed. Perhaps posterity will not so much care what either Pope or Prince said on the occasion.

According to the ' Italia,' the Mahdi is not so black as he is painted. It seems that a correspondent of that paper, a missionary who succeeded in escaping from Upper Egypt to Cairo, states that the False Prophet treats his prisoners remarkably well. They are lodged in tents and properly fed ; and, when some sisters of charity and Catholic missionaries expressed some natural anxiety as to the fate of some one hundred and fifty children whom they had baptized and whose education they had been supervising, the Mahdi had the little converts brought into camp, and intrusted to the care of their masters and mistresses. If this information is correct, it will be possible to think better things of the fierce soldier of Islam who is causing such trouble in the Soudan.

The ' New Zealand Presbyterian ' winds up an article on the " First Free Presbyterian Church of Otago" with the following remarks:—" The Presbyterian Church should be strong enough here to afford scope to the development of various types, without splitting or schism. If, however, they mean more than this, and intend creating another rival Presbyterian Church, of which distinctive principle shall be ' No Hymns,' the)'- are perpetrating a most egregious blunder. They may drag on for a few years a wretched existence, but must surely perish from off the earth as

a withered leaf. A church with such sort of distinctive principle writes its own epitaph. What a reading of Christianity does that action imply ! That men should thus unwittingly play into the hands of Popery, and make the Church the scorn of the infidel."