The Evening critic., 1881-06-22
FATHER GAXAZZI.
He Gives an Account of the Free
Christian Church In Italy.


Christian Church In Italy.
Father Gavazzi preached in Boston on
Sunday, and gave an interesting account of
the Free Christian church in Italy. He
sketched rapidly his struggles as an exile
until 1859, when the unity of Italy was
commenced. Before that time the preach
ing of the Gospel was forbidden by law, for
the reason that the priests were afraid ofthe
influence on the people of the real word of
God During that time he fought for what
he called the divine right of nations, as he
had to fight to be independent. To-day Italy
is independent, united and free, and the
fifth great nation of Europe, and has been so
since in 1870 the victorious armies entered
Rome and overthrow forever the power of
the Pope. Then was begun at last the
cvangelization of Italy. There had been be-
fore then some evangelical churches but
they were scattered and weakened by dis
sension among themselves; they were too
much separated and governed by too many
foreign committees. Being neglected by
their benefactors, they became affected with
a disgusting leprosy not indigenous to Italy,
but which was imported from England.
There was scctarianism, against which we
fought, and endeavoredt to have these churches
united into q sort of Evangelical Alliance,
and in June, 1870, there met in Milan repre-
sentatives of twenty-threc Of these churches,
Three or four meetings were held, ritual
and manual prepared, rules laid down and
the Free Christian church in Italy cstab-
lished. 1t is called Christian because the
crucifxion is preached, and free because It
Is entirely clear of "Reminiscences , 1t is en-
tirely an evangelical church, missionary
church; the object of all its societies is the
evangelization of Italy. Moreover, it is q
real genuine Italian church, in which we
have the advantage over foreign mission
aries, for we know the language, manners,
customs and habits of our people and can
strike directly to their hearts. 1t is asserted
that we are about to make reformation in
Italy, and we are called reformers. We OBJ
jcct to the term, for the simple reason that
to reform, we reform nothing; and, REFORM
ing nothing, we cannot be reformers. That
Is certainly logical. There is nothing to
reform, because it would be useless to at
tempt to wean the old Italians from
their mother church; they will cling to
1t until DEATH In that case either the
reform must come from the church, that is,
the clergy and laity, which the Pope would
never accept, or it must come from the
Pope, and we shall have to wait very long
time for that. Honce the reformation of
Roman Catholic Italy is impossible,
and, logically, the Free Christian Church
of Italy is not reformation or a transfer
nation. 1t isa renovation and restoration,
for we must remember that long ago Italy
was the first Christian nation in Europe.
In 1870 there were twenty-three churches
belonging to the alliance Now we have
churches in all tho largest cities in Italy,
thirty-six in ALL and thirty-fve evangelical
stations where the bread is broken and the
Word is preached; where eleven years ago
there were scarcely 400 communicates, there
arc now 2,000 with 300 schools largely at
tended by children of Roman Catholic par
entagc, and 1000 Sunday school children,
and our institution has the largest SYM
pathy of our cOuntrymen. We had to
fight for our evangelical schools,
not with papists, but with foreign
PrOtestants who insisted that the cOmpul-
sorry education law in Italy was sufficient
to make the children attend the public
schools, but We argued that they were neces-
sary to the futurity of our church, and we
gained our point. We have now 1900
pupils, of whom more than two-thirds are
the children of Roman Catholics, who prefer
to send their children to us because they
know that with us lies their only chance to
raise good generation of Italians. These
schools are, by official statement, superior
to any in Italy. We have also, directly OPP
pOsite the Vatican, an evangelical theOlogi-
cal seminary, which has proved the material
triumph of Christianity in Rome. The
Pope grumbles, but we are glad, for if he
were silent we should know that we were
only accomplishing work which he desired
to have done. The speaker concluded with
an earnest and eloquent plea for aid in car
rying on his church.