RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—Messrs. Moody and Sankey will remain in Boston until June. —The women of the United States support 287 foreign missionaries. —The largest Sunday-school in the world is said to be in Aintab, India. It numbers about 1,800 pupils. —Mrs. Jennie F. Willing recently closed a meeting of eighteen days in Indianapolis. More than 150 persons professed conversion. —In seventy-seven of England's largest cities and towns the Presbyterians show the largest increase since 1851, more than 150 per cent. —Mr. Moody's sermons have been translated into Spanish, Swedish, and Armenian. An edition of the latter has been published in Constantinople. —The practice is growing among Universalists, in certain sections, of administering the Lord's Supper once a quarter to the entire congregation. —The Salt Lake Tribune estimates that since the settlement of Utah over 600 murders have been committed by the order of the Mormon priesthood. —In St. Louis there are twenty-nine Catholic churches, and a college where the studies are superintended by twenty Jesuit professors, French, Belgian, and American. —Rev. William Muhlenberg, D. D., who was the author of “I Would Not Live Always,” and several other hymns, died April 8, in New York city, at the age of eighty-one years. —The London Daily News' dispatch from Rome says that General Oaretti recently presented Cardinal Simeon with an album containing the signatures of over 30,000 volunteers prepared to shed their blood for the temporal power of the Pope. —The Sandwich Islanders have now for several years given voluntarily about $24,000 per annum for the support of the gospel at home and on adjacent islands. They thus prove their knowledge of its worth. —The first Protestant church in the Turkish Empire was organized in Constantinople in 1846, and now there are over one hundred. This is a much better showing of religious tolerance than Russia, with her claim of “Defender of the Faith,” can make. —Rev. Andrew Bigelow, D. D., of Boston, died Sunday, April 1, in his eighty-second year. He was at one time minister of the Unitarian church in Washington, and Regent of Harvard University. He was a gentleman of pleasing and dignified habits, a thorough scholar, the master of a dozen languages, and his services were sought by several prominent parishes. But he relinquished all idea of professional distinction, and gave the last twenty-five years of his life to self-denying labors for the very poor of the city. The Pacific Churchman thinks “there is, or ought to be, such a thing as a Christian State,” a State which should realize its obligation to discharge “its own duties in the fear of God and in obedience to the will of Christ.” With regard to Sunday observance, the State should prohibit “all games and theatrical exhibitions,” as well as labor and “the sale of intoxicating drinks” on that day, and should “scrupulously close its legislative halls.” “Further than this the law cannot properly go.” “To impose fine or imprisonment for non-attendance at church” is, it thinks, going too far. —An Eastern paper says that a very interesting experiment is being carried out at Cannes, France, by Col. Dunne. He has placed a kiosque in the market place as a small cafe, and every morning he supplies coffee and bread to the country folks at nominal prices. The panels of the kiosque have texts painted on them, such as Mark 8 : 36; Matt. 25 : 10; and John 15 : 12. The people read these regularly, and gospel portions and tracts are distributed freely in the market, not without much hostility on the part of the Roman Catholic population. A movement in the contrary direction is being attempted by the Roman Catholics. They have opened a “Chapelle de Jesu,” where the Jesuits deliver lectures in English every week, and which are but too well attended.