RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—The number of Christians in China is now increasing sixfold every ten years. —Several Jewish synagogues have recently turned their attention to congregational singing. —The Jesuit Barracks is to be demolished. It is one of the oldest historical landmarks of Quebec. —More copies of the Sacred Scriptures are issued in the English language than in all the other languages of the world. —The receipts of the Vatican from the pope's jubilee were 6,500,000 lire in gold, exclusive of valuable presents. —It has been decided by the directors of the Permanent Exhibition at Philadelphia, not to open the exhibition on Sundays. —The pope's jubilee was celebrated in Ireland with great solemnity. Religious processions passed through the streets of several cities. —A Catholic church in Wiescheu, Grand Duchy of Posen, was recently struck by lightning, during service. Six persons were killed, and about seventy seriously injured. —Mr. Sankey's famous hymn, “The Ninety and Nine,” was written by Elizabeth C. Clapham, a daughter of a Scottish advocate. It was written for the Children's Hour, a paper published in Edinburgh. —After a struggle of sixteen years, the Methodist Episcopal church in Mechanics' Falls, Me., succeeded, March 29, in paying its debt. On the first of April the church building was entirely destroyed by fire. —With the union of the Methodist Protestant and Methodist churches, the two principal non-Episcopal Methodist bodies in the United States, the statistics of the new church will be—members and probationers, 140,000; itinerant ministers, 1,800; annual conferences, 40. —It is reported that Miss M. L. Whately, a daughter of the archbishop of Dublin, is carrying on a large school of 150 girls and 250 boys in Cairo. Arabic, English, French and Italian are taught, and Scripture lessons also given. —An exchange says that Bishop Fallow, in his sermon at the dedication of the Madison Avenue Reformed Episcopal church, said: “Year before last there were enough new churches built in the United States to extend, if put in line, a distance of forty miles.” —A midnight prayer-meeting has been kept up for over two years by the railway employees who have to await the arrival of the New York and Boston boats at Stonington. As a result of these meetings three churches have been organized on the line of the road. —The London Missionary Society at its recent anniversary in Exeter Hall reported an income of $318,320; a slight increase on the year preceding. This society has been the principal agent in the Christianization of Madagascar, and has done a great work in the South Pacific Islands. —A New York minister makes the announcement that there are in that city five hundred and twenty-five converts from Judaism to Christianity. These conversions have come through the labors of several Jews, converted at the time of the Moody and Sankey meetings in that city. —From Les Missions Catholiques we learn that the religious statistics of Eastern Tong-King in 1875 were as follows: Eight Dominican missionaries, 8 native priests (Dominicans), 29 native priests (Seculars), 5,000,000 total population, 52,000 Catholic population, 20 districts, 332 Christian communities, 963 pupils at the Mission de Dieu, 2 seminary colleges, 65 students, 2 orphan asylums, 68 Religious Tertiaries of St. Dominic, 2,351 baptisms of infants, 400 baptisms of adults.