Again, the selling of the offices and sacraments has in Paris at least been practised to an extraordinary extent. Before the separation, I have known of as much as £1,000 being paid for the services at a “rich” funeral. £80 to £100 was a common fee for marriages and funerals, and large offerings were expected at baptisms. Since the passing of the Bill the Archbishop of Paris has ordered that marriages and funerals should only be taken in a low “class,” where the fees are comparatively moderate. But I am credibly informed that it is expected that an “offering” will be given to the officiating priest equal to what was formerly charged. This relates, of course, only to the wealthier class, from whom the complaints have been deep if not loud. And what is the outcome of all this? Here you have a dissatisfied priesthood, especially as to the younger men; it is calculated that some two hundred secede from the priesthood every year; a people who have thrown over their Church and practically banished religion from their schools. You have teachers who have a better chance of employment and promotion if they are free-thinkers. Consequently juvenile crime is increasing, and immorality more or less rampant. Here are two facts. According to the official journal, during the year 1905, 3,805 boys of sixteen years of age passed through the police courts, and 566 girls of the same age; and in the same year there were 468 cases of suicide of men and women under twenty-one years of age. Again, in Paris alone the illegitimate births are over 12,000 a year, while in London, with its much greater population, the number for 1906 was 4,868. What is the remedy? Certainly a revival of religion will not come through politics—but will it come from the Church herself? There is a Liberal school of Roman Catholic Theology in France from which some hope much. M. Paul Sabatier (who has written so much and so well upon this subject) has great hopes that the Church in France will be saved by this party. But it is a party which has no favour from Rome, and time alone will show whether anything can be accomplished by it. Some, indeed, there are who think that the somewhat mysterious action of the Pope in the late controversy with the Government arose from the existence and strength of this “Liberal” party, and the latest Papal pronouncement seems to favour this view. This school—historical, liturgical, and critical—has broken down the intellectual conceptions on which Romish doctrine rests; and if its views are accepted by Roman Catholics generally, then the Vatican sees clearly that it cannot sway the minds of the people and bring them to obey implicitly.