Monday, Aug. 09, 1926

Trends

Jiddu. About the forest-bound Castle of Eerde, at Ommen in The Netherlands, sat last week the devotees of the Order of the Star in the East (Mrs. Annie Besant's Theosophist cult). The castle had just been donated to them, to be henceforth the capitol* of their faith. About the grounds ran a miniature railway bearing food for the many hundreds who waited in arduous patience to hear a "sweet, penetrating voice" issue from the soft, brown lips of their Jiddu Krishnamurti. In such tones will their "World Teacher" speak when his spirit flitters into Jiddu's tennis-playing, tea-drinking body. They saw nothing, heard nothing; they closed their congress. Soon Jiddu, under ward of Mrs. Besant, will come to Manhattan. Lutherans Outraged by bland demands for Cathedral of St. John the Divine and National Cathedral construction funds cried last week (in The Lutheran, Church periodical): "The Episcopal Church is one of the smaller/- American denominations; it is quite exclusive in its relationships to other communions, has of late years assigned itself a status toward civic affairs in Washington and New York for which its qualifications are of questionable origin and its performance inadequate. If it proposes to make its powers felt by means of cathedrals it should supply the money to build them from its own members and not solicit gifts from other denominations." Jerusalem Kirk. In the Holy City the president of the court of appeal looked about him, noted Scotsmen passing the Christian Sabbath desolate. They had no church. So he appealed to the Established and United Free Churches of Scotland, for a memorial church. He has got $40,000, needs $40,000 more.

*They have four capital cities for their cult--Ommen, Adyar in India, Sydney in New South Wales and Ojai, a small town of Ventura County, Cal., near Los Angeles. /-They count approximately 1,250,000 communicants. Catholics count more than 16,000,000, Methodists almost 9,000,000, Baptists 8,400,000, Presbyterians 2,500,000, Lutherans 2,500,000, Disciples of Christ 1,800,000 (TIME, April 12).