The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-04 00:00:00

GAVAZZI'S FAREWELL LECZ URE.

Gavazzi gave last night his farewell lecture,
selecting as the subject of his discourse "The Reli-
gious and Civil. Progress of Italy." The attendance
was by no means numerous, and there was little or
no novelty in the lecture, all the points of which
had been stated in previous orations. He observed
that there was some progress in religious Italy,
starting from 1853, when there was theoretically a
beginning in the establishment of a small congre-
gation of evangelical Christians at Turin ; but the
real practical commencement of religions freedom
in Italy dated only from the entry of Garibaldi into
Naples, and now by the blessing of God they had
no less than 40 congregations of evangelical Chris-
tians, numbering not less than 2,000 communicants
and 20,000 regular attendants at religious worship.
Considering the formidable opposition of Roman-
ism, this was great and notable progress. But it
was a mistake to suppose that Italy was being Pro-
testanised. In fact, he and others who were en- 1
gaged in the work of evangelising Italy, found it
necessary to make a declaration that Protestantising
was not their object; and if it were supposed that
it was, such was the prejudice of the Italians that
they would altogether fail. What they sought to
do was to Christianise Italy, not to Protestantise
her; and seeing that nine out of ten of the whole
Italian people did not believe in the Roman Catholic
Church, they had every encouragement to continue
preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in its purity,
which the Italian people were quite willing to hear.
The nearer they approached to Rome the less they be-
lieved in Romanism, and there was an Italian proverb
that if you would found a people without faith you
must go to Rome, the seat of the Pope; and that
proverb was infallible, and the:reason was that the
Italians had seen too much of Rome, consequently
the Italian mind was the most promising for receiv-
ing the true Gospel, and the Italian mission was
destined to achieve the greatest success of any mis-
sion. Popery was losing children fast in Italy, but
as her belief was that her children must remain at
the same number to the end of the world, viz., at
about 120,000,000, she must make up the number
she was losing in Italy by gains elsewhere, and the
country where now she was endeavouring to gain
children more than anywhere else was Protestant
England; and while he thanked God for what He
was doing for Roman Catholic Italy, he prayed
God to protect Protestant Be gland. The Roman
Catholics knew the value of attraction; they knew
how to do business, as witness the advertisements
of the musical attractions at St. George's Cathedral,
which drew unthinking Protestants to Roman Ca-
tholic churches, and enabled Romanists to boast, of
the large congregations they could bring together
even in London. The great guarantee for the pro-
gresshat of religious liberty in Italy was the
there had been 100,000 copies cf the Bible factsold in
Italy since 1860, and the free circulation of the
Bible by the colporteurs, for when the gospel circu-
lated freely the progress of religious liberty was
certain. Much of the change was due to Gari-
baldi, who, when he entered Naples, told him
(Gavazzi) to go and preach the gospel and destroy
the Antichrist. Still the preaching of the
gospel was illegal in Italy ; and what he waonmteed,
was to see the Italian Parliament sitting in Rome,
and religious liberty made a part of the Italian con-
stitution, for without religious liberty there was
really no security for political liberty. In regard
to the civil progress of Italy, he described the rea-
sons why it became necessary for the Italian States I