©OTmpflitem OUR SPECIAL EUROPEAN CORRESPON DENT. Dear Editor: I parted with you at, Frank- fort On the Main, a city of more wealth and beau ty, comparatively, than any we have jseen in Eu rope. On the Sabbath the stores.were all closed, except a few cigar shops and some unimportant places. The business streets, so wide, cleanly, and American-looking in the week, looked as ours do on Sunday, closed and quiet. This was better than we expected—so decidedly unlike Paris and some parts of London. We noticed in some of the fine mansions in the subui-bs/that the front room on the ground floor fa used 'as the kitchen, with bright cooking uten sils hanging on the walls. How unlike us in AmeHci', who use that part of the house for re ception-room or parlor, and keep the kitchen back out'of sight. Handsome shrubbery, beautiful yard and front door, harmonize badly with tin ah'd cdpper pans and kettles, however bright. Many of the people go off on Sunday to Hom burg, a great watering and gambling place, a few miles distant. In fact, there is more gambling there than at Baden, and women, young and old, join in' it. ' We heard of a wealthy countess, who has been playing all summer, all day and a large part/ ofthe night, and is said to have lost several hundred thousand dollars, but keeps on, either to regain it, or because she cannot stop as long as she has anything to lose. From Frankfort, we came, in an hour by rail; over ‘to Mayenne on' the Rhine. This city we fohnd very strongly fortified. Napoleon I. used to make it a grand starting point on his ex peditions to Prussia and Austria. Here we took the steamer for a sail DOWN THE RHINE. •We had heard of the beauties of the river all out lives, and supposed we were doomed to the usual .disappointment of over-estimation; but. shall I tell you we never heard the half of what wq saw? Instead of a dozen castles and old tow ers there are fifty, each with its picturesque loca tion, its strong position, or its quaint old legend, to make it interesting. Many of them are old ruins of most beautiful type; others are restored and are inhabited by the nobility wbo own them, as bummer residences. The hill-sides along the shoyes are not more beautiful than the banks of our own rivers. Sometimes, like the Ohio, the river winds through hills green with cultivation, though these are terraced and covered with the vino wherever a few feet of space can be found to plant it. Again, like the Hudson at the narrows, we wind around rocky hills too steep and bare for cultivation; and again, like the Schuylkill, through a wide valley cultivated in the most lux uriant manner, with hills separated by several miles, and smiling towns and villages along, the banks. On almost every height, however, is some old round-tower, some old turreted castle, or perhaps a pair of them, or some-ancient fortification which imparts an interest and a beauty tp the scene which we in America are quite too young to imi tatev At, Ooblentz, we landed and crossed the river on a bridge of boats to examine the immense for tification at EHRENBREITSTEIN, one of the largest in Europe. It is built upon a high mass of rocks, the top of it being 400 feet above the river. A carriage-way takes us close to the top, where the view of the valley and city opposite, is very fine. The fortress appears to be one of great strength, mounts 400 guns, and c’an accommodate a garrison of 100,000 men. Napoleon I. had it blown up, and it has been re built since his day. In the city of Coblentz, in front of the old church of St. Castor, in which Charlemagne di vided his empire among his sons a thousand years ago, stands a monument some twenty feet high and eight or ten square, erected by Napoleon 1., while on his way to Kussia, to commemorate the enterprise. A few months later the Russians were pursuing him through this same city, on his way homeward. The Russian general saw the monument add its inscription, below which he inscribed the terrible*'sarcasm":"* 1 Seen and ap proved by us, Russian Commandant of'the city of iCoblentz, January Ist, 1814.” As we retd tjie stwo inscriptions we thought how the wheel of Fortune does go round .sometimes. , COLOGNE is ft’busy old city, and boasts one of the grandest Cathedrals in Europe. It is not nnlike that of Milan in the general plan. It has a very lofty nave, with, most splendid stained glass windows, both in the end and sides. Four parallel rows of pillars,support the Gothic arches forming the roof. The choir alone is as large as many large churches, ahdhvas finished sufficiently to - be used for wor ship' 500 years ago. Since then, while years have rolled on, in which America has been dis covered, and a new world has arisen; while Eu rope has seen empires and dynasties rise and fall, and while it has emerged from the dark ages to its"present enlightenment, the .workmen, genera tion, after .generation, have been addiog to the cathedral. Now it was the transept on one side, a hundred- years later than that on the other: Another century sees the great steeple on the Paris, Aug. 1,1867, THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1867. right begun, and carried up to the roof; a cen tury later, tie steeple on tie left. They are both to be five hundred feet high when done, —which will probably be somewhere about tbe year A. D. 2367 judgiqg of the future by the past. We see one part of the building going to decay, the stone work above the doors and windows corroded by time, while twenty or thirty yards off, allis bright and new; surrounded with scaffolding and with an immense crane on the top, by which the stones are hoisted up. • Several of the public buildings and churches of the city, some of them 1000 years old, are sur rounded with scaffolding and undergoing repairs —looking mubh as though scaffolding and build ing forever were the fashion of Cologne. COLOGNE TO PARIS—BELGIUM, From Cologne we came southeast'3l4 miles by rail in twelve hours to Paris. The first part of the route lay through Belgium, a country which we found more like our own Pennsylvania than any we had seen in Europe. Coal mines, innu merable, with iron furnaces and rolling mills without end, spoke at once the voice of business, thrift, and prosperity. We had seen nothing like it in all of our travels on the continent. Many of the establishments were veTy qxtensive, requiring a capital of a million of dollars at least to work them. One sight, however, looked very rough: namely, women here and there loading the coal into cars, working vigorously with shovels; and again assisting to unload the cars of slate or debris on the immense dirt heaps that surround the mines and furnaces. In another place we saw a woman working in a brick-yard, shovelling the clay. In Berne we had. seen women sweep ing the streets and sawing wood. Through Switzerland we had seen them carrying the im mense basket strapped to their backs, loaded with truck or goods; or the half barrel of water strapped in the same manner, with slings around the shoulders like a knapsack. We had seen them through Germany catting wheat with a sickle, binding it and loading wagons. We had seen them help pull wagon-loads of hay with slings over their breast and shoulders; but'this heavy labor on tbe coal banks was worse than all; and how we did thank God that our mother and sisters and daughters lived in happy, free, smiling, elevated America, where women are not degraded to a level with beasts of burden. RAILROAD CROSSINGS. Along the line of railways all over Europe, wherever a road crosses the track, a gate is fixed on each side, which is kept closed by a guard who opens it for wagons to pass and closes it im mediately after them. The roads being fenced in by hedges or low fences- their entire length, cattle never get on the track, nor are people al lowed to enter and walk along it. - This precau tion many accidents. In many places the gate-opener is a; woman, and in . Belgium the women wear a uniform. Black oil cloth hat with; hroad brim, black sack and. shirt, with their sig nal batons, standing at every .gate, they looked quite different from anything we Americans ever saw. EMPLOYMENT OE WOMEN. We have noticed here in Paris, large numbers of women, generally of middle age, keeping the books of the hotels and stores; sometimes having of the entire hotel, and superintending the porters, chamber-maids, and waiters. The waiters at the tables are all young men, in, many, places dressed in full black with white cravats and .gloves, but women have entire charge of the rooms and corridors. This employmentof women as .book-keepers or shoprkeepers, &c., is a good feature, which might; be,: copied to advantage with ms, and add a new means of support for the sex so poorly provided for now, when thrown upon the world alone; but nothing in Europe has horrified us more than to see them reduced to, the position of laborers with shovels, or beasts of burden. NINETY MILLIONS OP AMERICAN GOLD, Paris is Crowded full—hotels'overflowing, and thousands of Americans swell the crowd: Mr. Morrill who is here, estimates the number now in Europe to be 60,000, who are spending at least §l5OO in gold each, on the average—some spend ten times that, and few spend less. This makes $90,000,000 of our American gold to be sent here, for the one item of sightseeing—verily there is no use of our figuring up the amount of our imports or exports while such an item as this is thrown into the scale. Mr. Morrill’s estimate is made from the lints of Americans at the bank ■w,■ * •• ,-. j ing houses, and the manifests of the ocean steam ers. So he told our friend, Rev. E. E. Adams, D.D., two "weeks ago.’ Good authority and by good channel, is it not ? G. W. M. Liberality in'New Brunswick. —The true blue folks of this province are getting on very fast. The N. Y. Tndependeritsiiys : “ Rev. Dr. Chapin, the distinguished Univfefsalist preacher of this 1 city, has been rusticating in the British province of New Brunswick. A paper of the province says, while Dr. Chapin was obliged to remain in St. Jobn * last Sunday, in consequence of the severe stbrm on the Bay of Fundy, he was cordially urged to occupy the pulpits of the Con gregationalistand one of the Presbyterian church es. His services were very well received, and at the evening service hundreds went away, Unable to enter the crowded church.” LETTER FROM THE BEORETARY OF CHURCH ERECTION. Dear Bro. M ears : I send yon some ex tracts pertaining to the importance and economy of clvardhhyJiMvag, as a means of missionary pro- In a recent number of your excellent paper yon quoted a part of a circular or report of the Secretary of Home Missions in which he showed that every pne of the missiqpary churches which had in the last five years become' self-sustaining possessed a house of worship that those which were likely to come to self-support had also built or were building; that some congregations had ceased to be dependent on missionary aid' imme diately on entering their new fedifices, but that scarcely an instance could be, found in -which a church had become self-sustaining that worship ped in a school-house or a hired hall or the church edifice of another denomination. Such facts should have'their effect in awakening the church to an appreciation of the work of Church Extension in the true and economical and endu- ring-manner. Another number of your paper spoke of -the Church in Omro, Wis.,-as having 'completed a' house of worship through the aid of the Church Erection Board under the supplementary plan. The appropriation made was but five hundred dollars, and its fruit already appears in the fol lowing report just received. “The Church at Omro becomes self-supporting. Here are argu ments for Church Erection,&e.” Other- encouraging items are added. “ The Church at Marshall will build just as soon as they can get a minister to engineer the matter, which I hope will be soon.” “ The Church,at Poynette will-also take .steps soon to build a house, which will put them on a good working basis at once.” “The Church at Lodi have dedicated their house under very hopeful auspices. They will be compelled to enlarge it at no -distant day,; as there is not room to meet the wants of the peo ple.” ; “The Church at Columbus will dedicate their beautiful house in two or three weeks/’ (This Church also repeived an appropriation from the Church Erection Board during the last year.) “ Their minister .will probably be installed as pastor. This movement has been a wonderful success I shall urge them up to the point of self-support impossible.” These extracts taken from a recent report' of Rev. B. Gr. Riley, district Secretary of Home Missions in Wisconsin, are sufficient to indicate what is being/done to establish the gospel on a sure footing ip that State. ' They show that the people are nobly helping themselves; Rhat the aid which they receive in the erection ur»<their. churches bears fruitimme diately and many fold to the- glory of God, But the results are snot- accomplished without great struggles on the part of these .feeble churches in the West. Christians in the older States have no' conception of the difficulty which attends these enterprises in the new settlements. I know whereof I affirm from recent observa tions on the field. At Jefferson city, Mo., I wit nessed the toil and anxiety of brother Whitta ker, (a Philadelphian by birth,) in his effort to secure a church edifice. He was preaching on the Sabbath in a narrow hall, with a dry goods box for a . pulpit, while during the'week he la bored early and late to raise his subscription list to the needful point, or to reduce the builders’ contracts, or to obtain some foreign aid above what the Church Erection Board could give; and yet with all his toil, discouragements hung like clouds over the work, and health and strength as well as hope, seemed almost to flag. At St. Joseph, Mo., I found a noble and self-sacrificing people in the midst of an equally hard and pro tracted struggle. Many of them had borrowed the money which they had subscribed. They were well nigt discouraged, and when they re ceived a promised grant from the Church Erec tion Board, they marked the timely providence by an hour of special prayer and thanksgiving. I wish those who build massive and costly structures without reaching the point of real sac rifice, could fully know the facts which attend church building on the border. In many cases, our missionaries have waived all payment of salary from their people in order to encourage them to build a house of God. And I have it on the testimony of Dr Patterson, of Chicago, that in some instances church members have, given twenty-five per cent, of all that they were worth, in order to possess a church. But this is mot the chief sacrifice. The sad dest feature of this whole subject is found in the waste and ruin of. health. More missionaries are broken down by discouragement and anxiety, than by all the labors which they are called to perform.' Afaithful man in Minnesota has been striving for more than a year to secure a plain and cheap house of worship. A grant was made by the Church Erection Board, but in the mea greness of-the funds contributed last year, the grant was inadequate. The burden still rests on the people and on the almost despairing pastor. This morning a brief notefrom his wife runs as follows: “ Dr. Kendall—Dear Sir : At ; Mr. - —-’s re qnest, I write to inform you that he is prevented by illness from making out his quarterly report at present. He has been confined to his bed for a week, with a fever brought on by over-work and anxiety, about the church building. ■; “Yours, &c.” This brief note gives us a sad picture of Home Missionary life, and shows where the real pinch comes. It is not in the want of failure of the missionary stipend. It is the ur gent need of aplaee to preach, and the worry and despair and sickness attendant upon the effort to obtain one. The missionary, work is hard enough at best. It should be free from those needless obstacles, which the church is so able to remove. A hu mane man will work his horse indeed: it is right : r hut never in a galling collar , nor under a chafing and needless burden , and is not a man who goes forth to work for Christ of more value than many horses? P. F. E. " MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY.” BY REV. I. S'. HORTON, S. MALDEN, MASS. This term' is not quite profane, but it is very irreverent. God is not worshipped by the mus cles but by the spirit.. Were there any Christi anity in uttering words, making gestures, and as suming attitudes, that Christianity would be mus cular —the'opposite of spiritual, which’last is the only true Christianity. . : But the term was probably invented to call at tention to a forgotten truth : that it is the duty of every Christian to keep his body in a state of as much efficiency as he-may. “ With this body thou shalt serve Me/’ That body then he can not innocently weaken or incapacitate. Suppose a merchant redeems a man from death in order that the redeemed may serve 'the redeemer as a porter. The merchant gives his; porter a hand cart with which he may carry'his doads. The porter loves his cart and determines to beautify it. -He hangs it 'about with heavy plates of cop per and Statues of bronze' and chains.of. brass. He files each spoke down to the size of a knit ting-needle. His elegant establishment can car ry with safety fifty pounds at a rate of two miles an hour. In a fit of enthusiastic zeal he turn-' bles in quarter of what it ought to be able to carry, and it breaks under a task too : great for its “ delicate organization.” . Where is the sin ? It is in impairing the ef ficiency of his instrument. '’•“Would it avail him to plead that every porter in the merchant’s ser vice was abusing and loading down his cart in just the same way ? If not, then it must be wicked to follow those fashions of dress, and diet that make the Christian a physical imbecile, una ble to step abroad without employing one hand to keep the dress from beneath the feet and the other to shield the eyes from the sun, sun and open air. These cannot be enjoyed, by. one clogged with, impediments. Exercise not enjoyed is like to be intermitted and almost sure to be unprofitable. To a Christian thus unhappi ly circumstanced, to auyxaxona&etv as a good sol dier (ii. Tim. 2: 3) is impossible. And with bodily faculties thus debilitated, mental powers sympathize more than most persons imagine. I have learned a valuable lesson on this point from a gymnastic ladies’ school) on account of which I bought me a home in South Malden. Its principal, Mr. Isaac N. Carleton, was at that time a stranger to me, but I had learned that his plan was to bring up physical culture to its true place side by side with mental culture and moral culture. And I had assurance from a friend of whose judgment I had long known the value that what he attempted he would do. But on be coming personally acquainted with the school af ter my removal here, I was somewhat chagrined at the unusually few hours devoted to study. Still I consoled myself with the idea that Mr. Carleton was erring on the safe side; and, on the whole, I was willing that considerable mental ad vancement should be sacrificed to bodily vigor and to happiness at school. It was not till hat tended the examination that I persuaded myself that there had been no sacrifice of intellect or soul to the body. I doubt whether so much meh taT progress would have been possible without good physical culture. The examination was, by the way, conducted in part by the State Superin - tendent of public instruction, who was then as much a stranger to Mr. Carleton and his school as I had been a few weeks before. And why should not as scrupulous attention be given to the physique of the mental athlete as to the mental status of the pugilist? If a se rene and happy life be necessary to the champion, why not perfect health in every organ to one who strives for intellectual mastery ? A sys tematic series of gymnastic exercises, the-growth of mueh- experience of many men in Germany, England and America, is one of the means used in this school. Another is -a physiological- dress which is generally laid aside only for meetings, visits to Boston and special occasions. Early hours, careful diet and constant attention do the rest. Many pupils are sent to such schools be cause their system is too much prostrated to per mit their studying in any other. I never knew of a case where the regimen has failed. South Malden was a happy selection for such a school. It is a small quiet village, not three miles from Boston, with whiehiit is connected half hourly horse-cars and eleven Steam^ 08 per day: It has but one church—-Congressional. This has more than doubled its Dur aera within three years. It has, I believe, no public eating place, drinking-plaoe, or livery stable—and re minds me strongly of Western Massachusetts. It is said that statistics make the town the sec ond in the State for salubrity and the first east of the Connecticut. But to return to the physical imbecility which the American Christian and patriot must equally dread. It saps female beauty ten years earlier than it fades in the wealthier classes in England. It renders domestic life a burden and its comfort dependent on Celtic, Teutonic, or African aid. It prevents many marriages and renders others an occasion of fearful and.unnameable crimes. Tbe consequences of these crimes are revealed in a most alarming aspect in the statistics of Massachusetts. . Probably they tell no worse story than elsewhere; hut, being more accurately compiled probablyjthan.thpse. of any other State, they bliow more-reliably our approach to the gulf that closed over the native , dominant race of pagan Borne. . In the first place, it appears that in 1860 there .were more births than in 1565 by over 6000. But as these ; crimes which are di minishing their . number, s are held in check by the confessional, the number of births are natu rally greater among .the foreign population than the native. Thus in the State, while the native and foreign population are 970,960 and 260,106 respectively more than three to one—the births are 13,276 and 14,130. ' Over these figures tbe papists are, exultant; and, though the improvi dence and vices of, the, Komish parents cause a much higher rate of mortality, among their chil dren, the most hopeful Protestant cannot con template the figures without alarm. Nor do facts within their own, observation cheer them. The thinned seats in the Sabbath school—so full when they were children—contrast painfully with the crowds that throng, the doors of- the mass-houses they passed., A large number of their married friends have, lived childless for years. "A few have one, two or three children. Six is a more; remarkable number than twelve used, to.be. The church epes out in Rachel’s ago nizing voice: Giveme children, or else I die ! But Christians have found out that babes cause sleep less nights, fill the house' with work, detain pa rents from concerts . and parties, and even from the, house, of, God. Innumerable bills, it is as certained, spripg from their little wants. They have .counted the cost and their minds are made up. If the father of eight .children become a candidate for their vacant pulpit, they are dis gusted with the, man and ashamed at his “ impru dence.” 'What will be the end of these things? I hope for better times. ■ Whoever will compare the costume of Elizabeth’s duke of, Leicester with the most inconvenient and troublesome a gentleman can .now venture to don, for the other sex. The time may come too, when con formity to the world .will take a definite place as a sin in the eyes of the church, and the behests of loose women in Paris be no longer law to those who have consecrated all to Christ. Meanwhile such schools as Mr. Carleton’s and such books as Lee and Shepard are publishing, and especially the endorsements of Presbyteries and associations, (Pres. Kitchell, of Middlebury, Vt., being in one case the mover) seem to -me like the faint glimmer of the dawn of a day, when those who run the Christian race shall lay aside every weight, and present their, bodies with all their powers. carefully perfected; a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. Jewish College in. Philadelphia. —The new Maimonides College; in this city, is be opened in October. The full course will embrace a period of five-years, and .wilLeatitle the grad uates to receive the--“ H,l nI degrees. Candidates for the mipwsry, having, the proper theological knowledge, will receive the degrees of Bachelor and. Doctor of Divinity. The branches of in struction include Greek, Latin, German, French, Hebrew, Chaldaio., and their literatures, the nat ural sciences, history, -mathematics and astrono my, moral and intellectual philosophy, constitu tional history and laws of the United States, belles-lettres, homiletics, comparative theology, the Bible with its - commentaries, the Mishnah with its commentaries, the Shulchan ’Aruch, Ya ha- Ohazakah, Jewish history and literature, Hebrew philosophy, etc. The Faculty, as far as yet ap pointed, consists of the Bevs. Isaac Loeser, Profes sor-of Homiletics, Belles-lettres and Comparative Theology; S, Morais, Professor of the Bible am) Biblical Literature; Dr. M. Jastrow, Profej/ ,r of Talmud, Hebrew Philosophy and Jewish^" 3 ' tory and Literature; Dr. Bettelheim,,B’ < ” essor of Mishnah with Commentaries, Shulcp“ ruc ' l and Yad ha-Chazakah; L. Butter/® i se C r0 ’ fessor of the Hebrew and .of the/^ a^a^c -^ aa ‘ guages, and of the Talmud, j/wili be °P eD t 0 all comers desirous of rec/ving/a knowledge of Hebrew literature. The venerable ap<? distinguished London Isra elite, Sir Moses now in his 84tkyear, has -heard t>e cry of the persecuted Jews in Moldavia,-nod is resolved to attempt relief. 1“ a letter to the editor of the Jewish Messenger , of York, he says • “I am on the point of paving for Moldavi/ at the request of our co-re ligionists,it being-jaought that, with God’s bless ing, my there may be instru mental in allayptgd the-cruel persecutions with which our brethren are afflicted.”
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