harboured a number of _Swedenborgians_, whose beliefs have undergone
certain modifications on French soil. For instance, thaumaturgy was
introduced by Captain Bernard, and healing by means of prayer by Madame
de Saint-Amour. But Leboys des Guais, the acknowledged leader of the
sect about 1850, reverted to the unalloyed doctrines of the founder,
and thanks to Mlle. Holms and M. Humann, and their church in the Rue de
Thouin, the Swedenborgian religion still flourishes in France to-day.

The _Irvingites_, founded in Scotland towards the end of the eighteenth
century, also made many French converts. Irving preached the second
coming of Christ, and believed that the Holy Ghost was present in
himself. He waited some time for God the Father to endow him with the
miraculous gifts needed for establishing the new Church, and then,
finding that many of his followers were able to heal the sick with
surprising success, he concluded that heaven had deigned to accept him
as the "second Saviour." He organised a Catholic Apostolic Church in
London, and proclaimed himself its head; while in Paris the principal
church of the sect, formerly in the Avenue de Segur, has now been moved
to the Rue Francois-Bonvin. Woman is excluded from the cult, and
consequently the name of the Virgin is omitted from all Irvingite
ceremonies, while the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the
Virgin are denied.

But many other sects exist in addition to those already mentioned.
Often their life is short as a summer night, and they appear and
disappear, leaving no trace behind them save a passing exaltation in
the hearts of their followers. Those who join them seem for a time to
be satisfied with dreams and illusions, but usually end by returning to
the bosom of the established Church--or by being confined in an asylum.

These innumerable sects with their illusory pretensions serve to
demonstrate the truth of our thesis--that the most ardent desire of
present-day humanity is for the renewal or transformation of the faith
to which it has grown accustomed.

A well-known critic has claimed that it is possible for all the
dramatic or comic incidents that have been played in all theatres of
all ages to be reduced down to thirty-six situations from the use of
which not even a genius can escape. To how many main variations could
we reduce the desire for reform displayed by our religious
revolutionaries? The search for salvation takes on so many