The Bible in St. Peter's, Rome.
A son of Dr. Cote, the well-known missionary in Canada, has written to his sister in this city that he lately read and distributed copies of the New Testament beneath the dome of St. Peter's, at Rome, and that the people eagerly took them. The prelates of the church came forth and unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the distribution. The police were called upon to drive the “heretics” from the “sacred” place, but when they found that Mr. Cote and friends were doing nothing more than scattering the word of God, they not only refused to arrest them, but asked for copies themselves, saying, “This is what we have long wanted.” Truly a wide and effectual door is now opened in Italy for the triumphal entrance of the truth.—Christian World. THE DISPATCHES OF SUNDAY NIGHT, NOV. 5.—announced a terrible disaster to an arctic whaling fleet. Thirty-three vessels were caught in the ice and crushed like egg shells, becoming a total loss. The vessels and cargo were valued at one million and five hundred thousand dollars. Twelve hundred sailors were saved from the wreck. CURIOUS FIGURES ON NATIONALITY.—Of the total population of New York City, 942,292, no less than 720,999 are of foreign parentage on both sides, 34,821 have either father or mother of foreign birth, and only 186,481 are of really American parentage. LARGEST CITY.—The recent census of the city of London shows that it contains a population of about 3,500,000. This makes it the largest city in the world, being almost four times as large as New York. If, however, we include in New York the population of its suburbs, as is done with London, then New York would be more than half the size of London. A COSTLY VICE.—The Chief of the Statistical Bureau at Washington, states, that the valuation of the annual whisky product is $375,000,000; of fermented liquors $126,000,000, of imported liquors $106,000,000, and of the annual sales of the 150,000 licensed-liquor stores in the country about $700,000,000—enough to pay off our national debt in about three years. How is it that an intelligent people can sustain a traffic whose only results are waste, pauperism, wretchedness and misery, temporal and eternal? SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT.—Rev. R. G. Wilder, missionary at Kolapoor, writes to the Interior, that there is more now done for the education of girls in India, than there was for boys thirty years ago. The chief of Western India gave 30,000 rupees as a memorial of the visit of Queen Victoria's son, the Duke of Edinburgh, of which 20,000 have been appropriated to the endowment of a girls' school. The remarriage of widows is also becoming more common. A wealthy Hindoo of Bombay, who was put out of caste for marrying a young widow, has brought a civil suit against the caste leaders for defamation, and they have been eager to settle the case. A Koolin Brahmin of Bengal has been required by law to support one of his neglected wives. This righteous decision has struck terror among his fraternity who have hitherto had almost absolute control, subject to no law, but their selfish will and lusts.—Christian Weekly. LOUISVILLE, NOV. 6.—At 9:30 o'clock to-night the giving way of a column in the lower room in the African Baptist Church, corner of Fifth and York streets, created a panic among the congregation in the upper room and the whole body rushed, jammed and crushed down the two narrow stairways on each side of the door, men trampling over women and children in their fright. Eleven were killed outright, two of them children, and a number, more or less, wounded. One had a leg broken. The killed were all women. The scene was terrible and heartrending: mothers screaming over their dead children, husbands in agony over their wives. The column or pillar which gave way proved to have been set on the lower floor between the joists, with nothing under it but a thin inch flooring. The public debt of the civilized world—what its masses owe to capitalists, in other words—is twenty thousand million dollars, according to an estimate in the New York Evening Post. The United States is the only country seriously engaged in reducing its debts. Nearly the whole amount of these debts represents the cost of shooting men, or cutting their throats, or burning up property. Public debts, says the Post, with perhaps unintentional cynicism, “are unknown in Asia, and there are none in Africa, except in Egypt.” The advanced man, therefore, if savage enough to murder his fellows, is at least civilized enough to pay for the pastime. A JUDICIAL decision in China, if sustained by other courts, promises to break up the coolie trade altogether. In a mutiny by some coolies, one of the officers of the ship was killed. The coolie who killed him escaped, and a demand for his rendition was made. The case was brought before the British court in Hong-Kong. The judge decided that the coolie traffic was piracy, that those engaged in it were pirates, and that the coolies had the same right as the captives of any other pirates to protect themselves and secure their liberty by killing their captors if necessary.—Christian Weekly.