"Freach the Gospel to every Creature-Beginning at Ferusalem."

Volume XXIV. January to December, 1873.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN AND FOREIGN CHRISTIAN UNION,

No. 45 BIBLE HOUSE.

1873. "

THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.

Vol. 24.

JANUARY, 1873.

No. 1.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

PAPAL AGGRESSION AT GENEVA.-For some months past the relations of the Pope with the Canton of Geneva have been becoming more and more disagreeable. The reason is to be found in a fresh instance of aggression on the part of the Papacy. The old free city of Geneva before its admission into the Swiss confederacy was almost exclusively Protestant; but the large rural territory which was added to it at that time to form the new canton brought in a Roman Catholic population but little inferior to the Protestant in numbers. This new element has received more than its full measure of support and countenance from the State. While the members of the Reformed Church are compelled to pay their proportion of all the taxes laid for religious as well as for strictly secular purposes, the Romanists, we see it stated, are called upon only to contribute to the support of their own worship. There has been, however, no R. C. Bishop of Geneva, the episcopal functions being discharged by the neighboring Bishop of Fribourg; and the Pope has by a compact made in 1819, acquiesced in this arrangement. Lately, however, emboldened by the rejection of the revised and more liberal constitution of Switzerland, Pius IX has ventured upon the appointment of a Bishop of Geneva without deigning to consult the cantonal authorities. This breach of treaty obligation may seem to us an affair unworthy of the attention of the government, but it is otherwise viewed by the inhabitants of a republic in which Church and State have long been united, and whose very existence has more than once been endangered by the insidious advances of Rome. To make the matter worse, the candidate chosen for the Bishopric (M. Mermillod, Roman Catholic curé of Geneva, and Bishop of Hebron in partibus), is a fanatical advocate of the Papal infallibility.

With becoming dignity the Council of State retaliated by refusing to recognise M. Mermillod either as Bishop or as curate, and requesting the Bishop of Fribourg to appoint a curé to the vacant charge. The latter prelate was too blind a servant of the Pope to acquiesce, and the