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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 29, 17 April 1891, Page 5

The Paris Town Council has bought an estate near Romillz, on which to try nn experiment for the indigent poor of the capital. It is proposed (o give a cottage and some tools and a Bmall advance of capital to twenty poor aid starving families, and Bee what comes of it. There will be workshops and dormitories for indiger t bachelors. If this experiment succeeds, oth^r estates belonging to tbe city of an aggregate valuation of 700 000 francs, will be similarly employed. A Nonconformist contemporary, commenting on tue recent speeeh of the T)oke of Norfolk in Birmingham, makes a statement so strange as to deserve recording. Quoting the Duke's words that " within twenty years the number of certified religious faitba had increased from less than 100 to 250 ; this showed how completely dissausfied tbe people most be with tbe form« of religion put before thorn," the Nonconformist journal says :—": — " Quite so ; and it shows, therefore, how completely and increasingly unsound must be the idea of a universal or State Church. While all this change baa been going on in the religious opinion of the country, the two Churches wbicb claim to embrace nil Christians in the land have not professedly altered tb«ir creeds or tenets one jot or tittle." We confess we are unable to fathom this philosophy. Does our contemporary allege that as " opinion " changes religion should trim its sails tn catch the latest wind of fancy ? Burelj it is the province ot religion to define truth, and equally as surely truth most be a quantity which is not mutable. What was sound dogma a hundred years ago ib so to-day, and must ever be. A. church which would alter its cri-ed by even '• one jot or tittle " carries its own condemnation in the action. To have taught yesterday what you c >niieinn to-day proclaims not merely that you am liable to error, but that you h *?e fallen into it,— Liverpool Catholic Tmet,