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Denmark abounds in small streams, but has no River of importance. In Norway there are abundance of Rivers, but few of them, owing to their cataracts, are navigable. The principal River of Norway is the Glomen, which is full of cataracts and shoals: it springs from the Lake of Oresund, and falls into the North Sea at Frederickstadt, below Christiana. Denmark has no Mountains; but Norway is an Alpine country. The highest Norwegian Mountains are about 9600 feet, or perhaps somewhat more, above the level of the sea. Among the numerous Danish Islands, we should not omit the mention of Iceland, in which is the celebrated Volcano of Hecla, about 5000 feet high, and several Water Volcanos, called Geysers, which throw up a large column of water to an immense height. The highest Mountain in Iceland is Snæfial, about 6860 feet above the sea. The Feroe Islands, off the Coast of Norway, belong to Denmark.

Religions of Europe.

THE Church of England is commonly called a Lutheran Church, but whoever compares it with the Lutheran churches on the Continent, will have reason

to congratulate himself on its superiority. It is in fact a church sui generis, yielding in point of dignity, purity, and decency in its doctrines, establishments, and ceremonies to no congregation of Christians in the world; modelled to a certain and considerable extent, but not entirely, by our great and wise pious Reformers, on the doctrines of Luther, so far as they are in conformity with the sure and solid foundation on which it rests, and we trust for ever will rest, the authority of the Holy Scriptures, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.

Other Lutheran churches are those of the North of Europe, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and the North of Germany.

Martin Luther, the great Reformer, was born at Eisleben, in Saxony, A. D. 1483; was summoned to Rome for preaching against Indulgences A. D. 1518; excommunicated by the Pope A. D. 1520; threw off his monastic habit A. D. 1524; married A. D. 1525; died A. D. 1546. His great protector on the Continent was the Elector of Saxony.

John Calvin, whose real name was Chauvin, was born at Noyon, in Picardy, A. D. 1509. The persecution of the Protestants in France obliged him to fly to Geneva, where he established his system, and died A. D. 1564.

Among the leading features of Calvinism are belief in Predestination, Election and Reprobation, and Irresistible Grace, together with the rejection of Episcopacy; instead of which Calvin proposed that the Church should

be governed by presbyteries and synods, composed of clergy and laity, without bishops or any clerical superiority. Hence Calvinistic churches are also called Presbyterian. The following churches are Calvinistic: Scotland, Holland, and Geneva.

Protestants are subdivided into numerous other sects, which it is unnecessary to particularize.

The Roman Catholic Church contains many errors, which were gradually introduced into it by the conti- . nually increasing thirst of the Popes for temporal power. Among their principal errors, renounced and opposed by the Protestants, are Transubstantiation, or a belief that the consecrated wafer, or Host, as it is called (from Hostia, a victim), are absolutely changed in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper into the real and substantial body and blood of Christ; Purgatory, or the intermediate state of punishment between this life and the final judgment, from whence the souls of men can be delivered by the prayers, or alms, or penances of the faithful; the Intercession of Saints; the worship of the Virgin Mary; Miraculous Interpositions; the Celibacy of the Clergy-against these, and many other idle, superstitious, or erroneous doctrines, and against the Supremacy and Infallibility of the Pope, the Reformed Churches Protest, and are therefore called Protestant Churches. The Popes formerly claimed the supreme

*The term Protestant was originally applied to the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and other Lutheran powers of Germany, who protested against the decree of the Diet of Spires, for the maintenance of the Catholic religion, A. D. 1530. April 19.

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dominion in things spiritual and temporal over all the Sovereigns of the earth, by virtue of being themselves the immediate vicars or vicegerents of God. It is but justice to the Roman Catholics to add, that these high pretensions, generally known under the name of the dispensing and deposing powers, (or the power of the Pope to dispense with the oath of allegiance from the subject to the Sovereign, and to depose the Sovereign in case of heresy), have been formally disavowed by the six principal Catholic Universities, consulted for that purpose in the year 1788.

The following countries are Roman Catholic: France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, nearly the whole of the Southern German States, Belgium, and part of Switzerland.

The King is the head of the Church of England. The established Religion of Ireland is that of the Church of England; but the mass of the population is Roman Catholic.

The Greek Church is derived from the Greek Christians, who formed the Eastern division of the Roman Empire, the capital of which was Constantinople. Hence it is also called the Eastern, in contradistinction to the Romish or Western Church, from which it differs in many unimportant points of discipline, but few very material points of doctrine. The Patriarch of Constantinople is head of the Greek Church, which comprehends the Russians and Greeks, whether on the Continent or in the Grecian islands.

Mahometanism is a form of religion engrafted on the Jewish and Christian dispensations by the impostor

Mahomet, who was born A. D. 571, at Mecca, in Arabia, and died A. D. 632. The Mahometans acknowledge the divine mission of Moses and of Christ; but maintain that these were ineffectual to convert mankind, and that none but faithful Mussulmen, or Mahometans, will be entitled to future happiness, which they believe will consist in a paradise of sensual delights. They are also believers in predestination. The doctrines of Mahomet are to be found in the Coran, which may be called the Mahometan bible.

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