PUBLICEM RY

ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

THE year 1904 has been one of unusual interest in religious matters on both sides of the Atlantic. Easily first, in importance, has been the contest between the Roman Catholic Church and the French Government-a contest that overshadows all other events in France, political as well as religious, and seems likely to grow more intense rather than less so during the year just opening. Another politico-religious event of general interest to the world is the conflict that has continued in Great Britain between the Government and the Church of England on one side and the Nonconformists on the other, over the Education Act of 1902. The year 1904 hands over to 1905 each of these contests as "unfinished business," as it hands over also the complication arising from the decision of the British House of Lords awarding the property and rights of the United Free Church of Scotland to the small body of Free churches that had remained outside the union. The only events of a politico-religious character that America has had on hand during the year are the dispute over the friars' lands in the Philippines (now settled amicably and to all appearances permanently) and the inquiry by the Senate into Reed Smoot's eligibility to take a seat in that body. Germany, for some years the storm center of religious

thought, has evolved nothing during the year that has attracted general attention. The Russo-Japanese war, the most absorbing event of the world during the year, has, of course, many phases of interest from the religious point of view, since the ecclesiastical and the political power in Russia are so closely identified, and since missionary activities in the Far East are widely affected by the war itself, and will be more deeply affected, perhaps, by its results.

Among the more notable religious gatherings of the year were the Centennial of the British Bible Society, held in March in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and the fraternal gathering held at the same time in Washington and addressed by President Roosevelt and Judge Brewer; the Religious Education Association, held in Philadelphia, March 2-4; the Bible League, whose first national gathering was held in New York, May 3-5; the Quadrennial Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in Los Angeles in May; the Triennial Episcopal Convention, held in Boston in October; the triennial National Council of the Congregationalists. While none of these was exactly epochmaking, each had elements of general interest. The British Bible Society reported the printing and distribution