84 LAWS OF MARYLAND.

or under the authority of such agreement, plan or certificate

of incorporation, including the choice and election of trustees,
in all respects, and to all intents and purposes shall be as valid

and binding as if the said agreement, plan or certificate of in-
corporation had been duly filed for record, and in proper time,
and all deeds, conveyances and transfers of property, in trust
for the benefit of any such church or congregation, and all
deeds, conveyances and transfers made and executed to others,
by or in the name of such church or congregation, as a religious
corporation, shall be good, valid and effective to all intents
and purposes, as if the agreement, plan or certificate of incor-
poration for such church and congregation had been duly filed
in the proper office, for record, within the time prescribed by
the law under which such church or congregation was organ-
ized and incorporated as aforesaid. And if it shall appear that
any church or congregation heretofore made and adopted a
good and sufficient agreement, plan or certificate of incorpora-
tion, and in the Clerk's office, where the same should have been
recorded no book for recording such instruments is to be found
covering the time in which such agreement, plan or certificate
of incorporation should have been filed for record, then in such
case it shall be conclusively presumed in all the Courts of this
State that the said agreement, plan or certificate of incorpora-
tion was duly and in due time filed for record in the said
Clerk's office, and that the book containing the record of the
same has been lost or destroyed, and such agreement, plan or
certificate of incorporation shall be again filed for record,
unless it has heretofore already been filed. If any church or
congregation, organized or incorporated as a religious corpora-
tion since the year eighteen hundred, under any law of this
State, hath failed or omitted to file in the proper clerk's office
its agreement, plan or certificate of incorporation, within the
time prescribed by the said law, and if such agreement, plan or
certificate of incorporation hath never been since filed for
record, such church or congregation shall have all the benefits
of this Act, if such agreement, plan or certificate of incorpora-
tion shall be duly filed for record in the proper Clerk's office,
within one year from the date of the passage of this Act.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That this Act shall take
effect from the date of its passage.

Approved April 11, 1910.