RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—It is reported that Mr. Spurgeon has injured his health by overwork. —There were 656 baptisms at the Baptist mission in Ongole, Southern India, last year. —Mr. Moody has closed his successful labors at Boston, and gone to Northfield to rest for a short time. —At Bay city, Mich., 3,000 persons have signed the pledge, and the Reform Club numbers 1,400 members. —Roman Catholic emissaries are traversing the South. They have established 65 schools for colored people in four States. —The children of Medford, Maine, are holding revival meetings several times each week in one of the intermediate schools. —The annual report of the fifty-second anniversary of the American Tract Society showed the receipts to be $441,198, expenditures $441,119. —The Boston Journal has heard of a case in which the restitution of $12,000 had been made by a party who had been converted at the Tabernacle meetings. —The Archbishop of Paris warmly protests against the vote in the Chamber of Deputies, which casts suspicion upon the patriotism of French Catholics. —Mr. Tooth, the English rector whose ritualistic practices at Hatcham caused so much trouble, received, when at Rome, an order for an audience with the pope. He declined the honor. —It is much remarked that the Russian troops passing Bucharest have exchanged their ordinary colors for flags bearing a double Greek cross, carried only when the war is a religious one. —The Archbishop of Quito was poisoned at Panama, while saying mass, by means of strychnine introduced into the wine in the ceremony. There was a great excitement and indignation over the sacrilege. —Hector Bronson, who was the oldest Methodist clergyman in active duty in the State of New York, and for thirty-five years agent of the American Bible Society, died recently at Rhinebeck, aged eighty-six years. —The translation of the relics of St. Benedict, martyr, was recently celebrated by the Passionist Fathers at St. Michael's Monastery, West Hoboken, N. Y. Seven thousand persons assisted at the services. It was stated that these relics were secured from the Vicar General of Poletto, Italy. —There are five hundred and forty monasteries and convents in Russia, the revenues of which amount altogether to £1,300,000. The cost of maintaining each monk or nun during one year, on the average, is about £22. In Servia there are forty-one convents. The bishops have been forbidden to ordain any more monks, and the legislature is considering a proposition to turn the convents into schools of agriculture and forestry.