University of Virginia Library

XII.—No Funds—no Faith, no Works.

THE Committee of the Protestant Detectoral Union on Ginx's Baby held twenty-three meetings. They were then as far from unity of purpose as when they set out. Variety was given to the meetings by the changing combinations of members in attendance. The finances were little heeded in the intensity of their zeal for truth. These at length fell altogether into the hands of the association's secretary, and we have seen involved large items of expense. The twenty-three meetings extended over a year. At the end of that time the secretary startled the committee by laying on the table a demand for the board and keep of the Protestant baby for three months, amounting to £36; and adding that the sum in hand was £1, 4s. 4 1/2d.

In his report he said: "No effort has been spared by means of advertisements, pamphlets, tales, leaders and paragraphs in newspapers and religious journals, together with occasional sermons, to maintain the public interest in this child; but attention has been diverted from him by the great Roman Spozzi case, and the anxiety created throughout the Protestant world by the recent discovery made by Dr. Gooddee, of a solitary survivor of the ancient Church of the Vieuxbois Protestants in a secluded valley of the Pyrenees.''

The secretary asked the committee to provide the money to discharge the baby's liabilities; but they instantly adjourned, and no effort could afterwards get a quorum together. When the persons who had charge of the Protestant foundling discovered the state of affairs they began to dun the secretary

and to neglect the child, now about thirteen months old and preparing to walk. Since no money appeared they sold whatever clothes had been provided for him, and absconded from the place where they had been farming him for Protestantism. The secretary, by chance hearing of this, was discreet enough to make no inquiries. Ginx's Baby, "as a Protestant question,'' vanished from the world. I never heard that any one was asked what had been done with the funds; but I have already furnished the account that ought to have been rendered.