A WALDENSIAN pastor was lately traveling through the beautiful island of Sardinia, and some extracts from his journal will doubtless be of interest to our readers. They have been translated from the Italian, and forwarded to us by the Rev. R. S. Ashton:—
“At Oschiri I saw a peasant-poet who has suffered much persecution at the hands of the priests, owing to the fact that one of his poems contained an attack upon the State religion and a denial of the existence of hell. He was dragged before the civil tribunal and convicted, but was released on appeal. The priests, however, continue to persecute him. They forbid their penitents to read his poetry, and refuse absolution to any who admit that they possess his works.
“In one village, I met with a woman who had flung the Bible away because it condemned marriage. Her absurd notion arose from her happening to see the words, ‘Blessed are the paps which never gave suck.’ She and her father also thought Jesus vindictive, because he had overthrown the tables of the money-changers. And nothing that I could say would remove their prejudices.
“At Usini, a village of 2,000 inhabitants, the principal man is a Catholic, but thoroughly skeptical. The Bible he regards as a mass of fables and immoral stories. His wife, who was present, and who could talk of nothing save saints and our lady, said she only wished she were a man, and she would contend with me by means of the tongue and a stick. Thereupon her husband interposed, saying that Jesus bids us love our enemies. But she would not be pacified. She persisted that I had come there to send the people to hell or to buy them over to my religion; but, said she, ‘you will not be able to buy any here.’ The conversation with this strange couple lasted four hours, and on leaving I said to myself, ‘Here we see how skepticism and Catholicism unite to oppose the truth.’
“In Alghero, an important town of 11,000 inhabitants, I first of all found out some of the principal people, and especially a retired captain. They were favorable to Protestant doctrines, but unwilling to incur the odium of opening their houses for a meeting. The fact is, the priest is all-powerful through the women who go to the confessional. He gets them to give up the Bibles which their husbands have bought from the colporter. But not infrequently the husbands have torn out a few leaves or the whole book of Psalms, which they carry with them in their pocket-books. In Sassari, where there are a few Protestants, I was called on to bury a child. After a service at the house of mourning, the procession started for the grave, headed by the town band, and attended by a large number of persons. A festa was being celebrated at the cemetery, which thus happened to be crowded. Taking my stand on the base of a large crucifix in the center of the place, I preached to the thousands around for nearly an hour, and not a person moved. As they left the place some one was overheard saying, ‘He spoke about Christ, therefore he is not a Protestant, but a Christian.’
“Cagliari is one of the chief towns of Sardinia. Its patron-saint is St. Efesio, and a German Catholic has published a work to show that the worship of this saint goes back to pagan times, when Cagliari was founded by the Carthaginians, and is a relic of the old worship of Baal and Moloch. The difficulty of work in Sardinia is great and manifold. The dialects are numerous. Ignorance and corruption abound. Perfidy is a pretty general characteristic of the people. In this island you find yourselves, as it were, in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, ‘everything is possible with God.’” —London Christian World.