There '11 be twa winters in the year.

The Wahabees is the name of a reforming Mahommedan sect founded by Abd-el-Wahhab (1691-1787), a renowned Oriental scholar of the province of Nejd, in Arabia, who prohibited to his followers the use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco, and reasserted the primitive doctrine and practice of the Koran. Subjected to persecution, the Wahabees appealed to the sword, and acquired, in addition to the character of a reforming religious sect, that of a native Arabian political party. At one time their power extended over almost the whole of Arabia, Mecca being conquered in 1803, and Medina in 1804. The Wahabees' power was for a time broken by Mehemet Ali, of Egypt, and his son, Ibrahim Pasha (acting for the Ottoman Porte), and the Wahabees'chief was beheaded (December 19, 1818), in the public square in front of St. Sophia, Constantinople; but the empire of the Wahabees was speedily re-established, with Nejd for its nucleus, and at the present day extends, a well-organized and strong independent state of Arabia, in a broad belt across the center of the peninsula, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, the population being estimated at four millions.

After 1823, for many years, the Wahabees gave trouble in India.

The societies formed to distribute the Holy Scriptures are called Bible societies. The following are the names of the chief societies, their nationality, date of foundation, and approximate total issue of copies( in whole or in part) of the Bible: England, British and Foreign, 1804 (due to the initiative of a Welsh clergyman), translated into some three hundred different languages, 100,000,000; Scotland, National, 1861 (from union of older soc., as the Edinburgh, 1809), 6,000,000; Ireland, Hibernian, 1806, 5,000,000; United States 1816, 40,000,000; France, two societies f. 1818 and 1833; Germany, Prussian, 1814; Switzerland, Basle, 1804; Russian, 1826, suppressed, but revived 1831; Sweden, 1808; Norway, 1816; Netherlands, 1815.

The Kaaba, or "Caaba," was taken possession of by Cossai about 455, and was restored in 1630 by the Sultan Mustapha. The word means "the square house," and it designates a stone building in the great mosque at Mecca. Next the silver door is the famous Black Stone, "Dropped from Paradise." It was originally white, but the sin of the world has turned it black. In pilgrimages the devotee walks round the Kaaba seven times, and each time he passes the stone either kisses it or lays his hand thereon. According to Arabian legend Adam, after his expulsion from the garden, worshipped Allah on this spot. A tent was then sent down from heaven, but Seth substituted a hut for the tent. After the flood Abraham and Ishmael rebuilt the Kaaba.

By infallibility is meant entire exemption from liability to error when the pope speaks ex cathedra. The dogma of papal infallibility was promulgated by the Vatican Council in 1870. As adopted by the Council it is thus defined: "We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed, that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith and morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrines regarding faith or morals; and that, therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiffs are irreformable of themselves and not by consent of the Church."

The Waldenses, or Vaudois, is a sect inhabiting the valleys of the Cottian Alps, in Northern Italy. It was founded by Peter Waldo (1170), a rich merchant of Lyons, who sold his goods and gave the money to the poor, and then went forth as a preacher of the doctrine of Christ from a translation of the New Testament made into Provencal. The preaching of the Waldenses led to collision with the ecclesiastical authorities, and they were formally condemned by the Lateran Council of 1215. Persecution increased, and the Waldenses, originally an esoteric society within the Church, withdrew altogether from its ministrations, and appointed ministers of their own, election taking the place of ordination. By the end of the thirteenth century they were found in France, Italy, Spain and Germany; but their numbers were greatly reduced, and their limits circumscribed, by persecution on the one hand, and the general movement of Protestantism at the Reformation on the other. They have, at present, about forty churches, with four thousand members.