DISCIPLES OF CHRIST. The General Christian Missionary Convention of the Disciples of Christ was organized at Louisville, Ky., in October, 1869. Its second annual meeting was held in Cincinnati on the 20th of October, 1871. Nearly all the States were represented. The board reported the entire receipts for the year past $48,123.33, against $36,699.08 received the previous year. The number of additions to the church, the result of missionary work, was 5,611 against 3,340 the previous year. By a table appended to the report of the board, it appears that the greater part of the contributions to the treasury came from the States of Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Iowa, West Virginia, Michigan, Nebraska, Georgia, and Kansas, in the order in which they are named. The greatest numbers added were in the States of Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, Indiana, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska. For the mission which the board had undertaken to establish in Jamaica nothing was done during the past year. There were no funds with which to aid the work, and the board had refrained from giving the show of help when they could not afford the substance. Attention was called to appeals from Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, in regard to the evangelization of the colored race. The Mississippi Cooperation partly support one colored preacher, who is laboring successfully. Statistics were presented in the report showing that a large majority of the preachers are dependent upon secular pursuits for support. From a partial summary of facts from States and parts of States, it appears that the ratio of preachers devoting themselves wholly to the ministry is only about one to fourteen churches. Measures were taken for the circulation of tracts, and for the publication of a missionary monthly. In October, 1870, a delegation from the Ohio Christian Missionary Society (Disciples of Christ) visited the Ohio Baptist State Convention with messages of fraternal sympathy. The message was cordially responded to, and a committee were appointed by the Convention to visit the Missionary Society at its next meeting. The meeting took place on the 25th of May, 1871. The Baptist committee presented an address which included a clear statement of the belief of the Baptists, noting the points on which the two denominations were supposed to agree, and those on which they were supposed to differ. The address was kindly received, and responded to, by the Missionary Society, who appointed a committee to visit the next State Convention of the Baptists, and make a suitable response to their communication. Their address of response was prepared in time to be laid before the Christian Missionary Society for approval at its October meeting. It is the clearest and most definite statement of the belief of the Disciples that has

been given to the public. It notices only the points in which a difference had appeared between them and the Baptists:

1. The Deity and Personality of the Holy Spirit.-The Disciples admit what is meant by this doctrine, but "object to propounding any dogma concerning the Holy Spirit in any uninspired terms whatever as a test of faith or of fellowship," that regeneration is the work of the Spirit using the word of truth as an instrumentality. But, while Baptists believe that the Spirit directly influences the mind and the heart of both sinner and saint, Disciples limit His direct influence to Christians, through whom the Spirit acts upon the unregenerate.

2. Regeneration, in the view of the Disciples, "includes all that is comprehended in faith, repentance, and baptism," and, so far as it is expressive of birth, it belongs more properly to the last of these three than to either of the former. The Disciples hold to a change of heart as antedating baptism, and attach no importance to the latter except as the former has taken place. Baptism consummates the change from an uncovenanted to a covenanted state.

Nevertheless (3 and 4), the act of baptism is an essential condition to the remission of sins. While those who believe and are baptized are saved, those who are not baptized are not saved, though they believe.

5. The Disciples hold conversion as essential to church-membership; but they deem "the deliberate and voluntary abandonment of the world and open confession of the Son of God credible evidence of conversion," when there is no opposing testimony.

6. As to the True Basis of Church Fellowship. -The disciples do not accept the distinction made by the Baptists between "Ecclesiastical" and "Christian" fellowship. To be in the church scripturally is to be "in Christ," and to be out of the church, or body of Christ, is to be out of Christ. But, while they withhold recognition from sects as churches of Christ, they do not mean to deny the Christian character of many in these sects. Hence they do not forbid these Christians joining them in singing and prayer, or reject them from the Lord's table.

This statement is regarded as placing the Disciples more nearly in accord with the Baptist and with the Orthodox Churches in general than they had been supposed to be.

A correspondence of similar character and tenor, with a nearly similar result, took place during the year between the Baptists and the Disciples in Iowa.

DISEASE, GERM-THEORY OF. The supposed fungoid origin of cholera has been made the subject of a careful report by AssistantSurgeon Lewis, of the British Army, who undertook the inquiry in India, pursuant to instructions from the Army Sanitary Commission. It is limited to facts bearing on the cholera theories of Hallier and Pettenkoffer. The sub

jects of examination are divided into three classes, cysts, spores, and micrococcus, the three elements of Hallier's theory. Mr. Lewis took direct observations of choleraic discharges, in comparison with observations on other media, partly by the use of reagents, time, and temperature, and partly by cultivation experiments. In 1866 Hallier discovered in choleraic discharges yellowish-colored cysts of spherical or oval forms, inclosing yellowish shining spores various in size, also groups of swollen spores surrounded by minute molecular matter (so-called micrococcus), proceeding apparently from the breaking up of the spores. These molecules were seen to adhere to various objects in the fluid on which they appeared to feed, exhibiting signs of germination, groupings, filamentary arrangements, and finally branching filaments. The resulting fungus, and polycystus, were considered by Hallier to resemble the rye-fungus of Europe, and probably to be present in the diseased rice of India; and he held that this, introduced into the intestinal canal and then passing through the various stages of its existence, caused the phenomena of cholera by its action on the intestinal epithelium. Nature, summing up Mr. Lewis's labors, says:

As regards Hallier's cysts, Mr. Lewis states that he has never met with any in fresh cholera discharges, but that he had repeatedly developed them. The other cyst-like bodies proved to be either fragments of tissues or ova, none being peculiar to cholera. Cultivation experiments with cholera discharge containing cyst-like bodies yielded branching fungi with macroconidia, which gave place to aspergillus; in other cultivations, however, the only products were penicillium and aspergillus. Mr. Lewis admits that cysts distinctly resembling those of Hallier may be developed by cultivation from cholera discharges, but that he had found them only three times in more than a hundred cultivations.

Their development is therefore not a constant phenomenon, and Mr. Lewis further shows that cysts of the same character can be developed in discharges not choleraic, Bodies resembling spores are very common in cholera discharges, and Mr. Lewis bestows much pains in demonstrating their true nature. He illustrates every step of the inquiry by slides, and classifies the bodies under the four following heads: 1. Globules, of a fatty nature. 2. Altered blood-cells. 3. Corpuscles, embedded in a tenacious substance. 4. Globular condition of certain infuso

ria. The corpuscles in class 8 are amoeboid in character, and are probably due to effused blood-plasma. There is no evidence of the presence of spores of fungi.

The last subject inquired into was the so-called micrococcus, the supposed "germ" of cholera, which in Hallier's view might pass into the human body in water or air, and then give rise to cholera by developing itself at the expense of nitrogenous material, especially intestinal epithelium.

Mr. Lewis shows that minutely-divided matter is not more prevalent in choleraic than in other discharges, indeed, less so, but that attempts to produce micrococcus by cultivation had entirely failed, possibly on account of the many sources of fallacy in such experiments.

He gives the results of a number of observations made with infusions and decoctions of animal matter, including cultivations with cholera discharge, and shows that, in spite of every care in the manipulations, very different forms of life will make their

appearance in substances derived from the same source, and under apparently identical conditions. His general conclusions on this first stage of the inquiry are

1. That no cysts exist in choleraic discharges which are not found under other conditions. 2. That cysts or "sporangia" of fungi are very rarely found under any circumstances in alvine discharges. 3. That no special fungus has been developed in cholera discharges, the fungus described by Hallier being certainly not confined to such. 4. That there are no animalcular developments, either as to nature or proportionate amount, peculiar to cholera, and that the same organisms may be developed in nitrogenous material even outside the body. Lastly, that the supposed debris of intestinal epithelium is not of this origin, but appears to result from effused bloodplasma.

Unless these conclusions are materially modified disposing of Hallier's theory of cholera. Should, on subsequent inquiry, they must be considered as however, Mr. Lewis's further investigations prove that Hallier's fungus is present in choleraic discharges and in diseased rice as a constant, we should by the action of this fungus and by nothing else. still require scientific proof that cholera was caused

Pettenkoffer's theory of cholera connects the prev alence of the disease with certain conditions of damp subsoil and subsoil water, besides the presence of a tion of the cholera inquiry. What has been done germ." Little has been done as yet in this por is very interesting, although it does not support the theory. Observations regarding it have been made at Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Fyzabad, Agra, Morar, Meerut, and Peshawur. The subsoil-water experiments do not appear to sustain Pettenkoffer's views.

Dr. Bastian, in a lecture before the University College of London, attacked the germ-theory of disease. He said that the advocates of the theory have always rested their belief in it explanation of the virus of the contagious because they considered that it offered a ready diseases within the body of the affected person. This they suppose is not otherwise to be explained. But all considerations adduced in support of the theory are explicable by another supposition. Dr. Bastian admits that there are certain diseases which do undoubtedly depend on the presence and multiplication of organisms in the blood, and throughout the tissues generally. Such is the epidemic and highlycontagious disease among cattle, called in England "the blood," and shown to be dependent organisms, closely allied to "vibriones," in the on the presence and multiplication of living blood of the animals affected, and that similar organisms are also locally most abundant in the contagiously-incited "malignant pustule' of man. Pasteur's researches on silk-worms also establish the cause of the fatal epidemic, from which those creatures suffer, to be a peculiar corpuscular organism, which he terms psorospermia, in all the tissues of the body. But these, says Bastian, are rare and peculiar cases, and he grants that there may be other parasitic diseases among animals; but, in all the specific diseases to which man is liable, the author has invariably failed to discover any traces of organisms in the blood. He says:

The experience of many other observers has been similar to my own in this respect. But if living