BISHOP JOHN H. VINCENT, in an article on the "Social and Religious Life in Modern Jerusalem," in the Independent of March 7, does not present a very flattering view of what was once "the joy of the whole earth." He says:— But nowhere do misconceptions of Christianity find firmer hold than in this very city where the Son of God walked among the sons of men. In this place, full of sacred associations, whence the fountain of divine truth sent forth its streams, exist the most corrupt forms of Christianity, illustrating the fact that it is the half-truth or the distorted truth which works most harm to men. An African bishop in an early century, when he ordained an elder, in answer to the question where he should go, said, "Go where there is most devil." A missionary movement on this principle would make directly for Jerusalem; for211the purest forms of religious theory and life are most needed where perversions of truth in false systems of doctrine and conduct most abound. El Khuds (the holy) presents to-day the most melancholy picture to be seen on the planet,—a picture of religions full of hatred and malice, in which are warring sects, each one of which claims to have an "unbroken succession" from apostolic days, and to be the "only" representative of the true church of Christ on earth. In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Mohammedan scimitars and rifles keep guard over these precious representatives of the so-called "church" of Him who "came to bring peace on earth and good-will to men." It is in Jerusalem that we have the ripened fruit of the sacerdotal and sacramentarian theory which puts emphasis on places and things and modes, and on physical taction as means of spiritual life. In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher one sees the very apotheosis of the tractarian idea, where nearly all that is distinctively Christian is lost, and all that is pagan retained, and where, amidst flickering candles, clouds of incense, bursts of music, and the discordant rumblings of greasy priests, one longs to hear the key-note of a true Christianity from His lips, who, under the shadow of Gerizim, said to the woman of Samaria: "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." "God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." There is no place on the planet where men more seriously need the simplicity and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ than in this holy city of Jerusalem.