Religious News and Notes.
--Henry Kiddle, superintendent of public schools in New York city, has embraced Spiritualism. --The Lutheran Deaconesses Institution at Pittsburg, Pa., has received a legacy of $100,000. --The total issues of the American Bible Society during sixty-three years amount to 36,052,169 copies. --The governors of Queen Anne's bounty have just distributed $114,000 in aid of one hundred poor benefices. --The Reformed Presbyterians of Scotland cordially receive the proposal of the Established Church for union. --A Mystic (Conn.) clergyman received only four dollars and a half salary last year. It is thought he worked overtime for the four dollars. --Out of the thirty-nine graduates from Union Seminary, three go as missionaries to Mexico, one to Africa, two to India, and one to China. --Three hundred eastern excursionists bound for the Yosemite Sunday-school, arrived in Salt Lake the morning of June 1, to remain over Sunday. --The Methodist Women's Missionary Society collected last year upward of $80,000 for foreign missions. It enters upon its eleventh year of usefulness. --At the Sunday evening, June 1, revival temperance meeting held by Francis Murphy in S. F., the M. E. Church was crowded to its utmost capacity. Rev. Mr. Snow of Boston, addressed the meeting for a few moments; also Drs. Cox and Pierson spoke briefly, after which Mr. Murphy delivered one of his characteristic addresses. --A lady missionary teacher of Utah said at the Saratoga Assembly, last week, that the degradation of Mormon women there is as great as that of women in China. --There were thirty-three deaths among the ministry of the Southern Presbyterian Church last year. It is stated that those received into the ministry are less than half as many. --Count Andrew de la Ville, of Rome, states that the errors and absurdities of Catholic dogma had become offensive to his morals. He has withdrawn from the Church of Rome and become a Methodist. --It is estimated that 160,000,000 copies of the Scriptures have been printed and circulated in the present century. The American Bible Society has printed 35,000,000 of this number, and the British and Foreign Society 82,000,000. --The bill designed to relieve the Seventh Day Baptists from the operation of Sunday laws, which has been pending in the Pennsylvania Legislature, has failed in the senate. A majority voted for it; but it did not receive a two-thirds vote. --Eight new cardinals have been appointed. Among them is Dr. John Henry Newman, of England. He said in replying to the consistorial messenger who officially announced to him his new rank, that he would hereafter, as he had in the past, resist with all his powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. --The Presbytery of Cork overtures the Irish Presbyterian Assembly to the effect that, "as the use of instrumental music is warranted by the Scriptures," the Assembly shall so deal with the question as to "prevent continued interference with the scriptural liberty of congregations in the service of praise." --Bishop Russell, of Ningpo, China, confirmed last year 113 persons, making exactly 300 in six years. All have been Chinese save sixteen. He ordained three natives to priests' orders. The Bishop refers to an awakening in the Cu Kyi district, and says there are not wanting signs that a change favorable to Christianity is taking place in the minds of the people generally. --All of the Presbyterian churches in the country, of every phase of belief, have recently been represented in four general assemblies. The original body met at Saratoga, N. Y. A branch, differing from the original body in no point of doctrine, but in politics, met at Louisville, Ky. The "Associate Reformed" branch had their twenty-first general assembly at New Wilmington, Pa. Of this body the New York Tribune says: "We doubt, indeed, whether many of the church could define to-day the ancient boundaries over which their forefathers fought so fiercely; the chief differences apparent now between the Presbyterian and his seceding brother is that the latter persists in regarding hymns as mere anthems to Satan, and observes the Sabbath with an almost Hebrew strictness. A law-suit involving a large amount of church property, which depended on the right of members of a kindred and still smaller Scotch Presbyterian organization to sing Wesley's and Moody's hymns, instead of David's Psalms, if they chose, has been going on for years in the Philadelphia courts, and was decided last week in favor of the modern hymn-book and liberty." The Cumberland Presbyterians met at Memphis. This branch left the main body seventy years ago, because the General Presbytery in Kentucky insisted upon the ordination of partially educated ministers, and also diverged from the doctrine of election. The business between the four assemblies has related more to the personal affairs of each church than to national interest.