RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—New York has 67 public schools and 329 church buildings. —There are 18,000 Israelites in San Francisco, five synagogues in the State, and three in the city. —There was a falling off of fifteen thousand dollars in pew rents in the Plymouth church this year. —Cardinal Simeoni, the successor to the late Cardinal Antonelli in the office of secretary of State to the Pope, took possession of his apartments in the Vatican, December 6th. —The Bible Pavilion in the Centennial grounds at Philadelphia sold during the Exhibition 3,334 Bibles, 8,489 Testaments, and 13,352 portions of the Bible, making 25,175 volumes in 45 different languages. —The Fanfulla of Rome announces that the Duchess of Galliera has sent the Pope 1,000,000 lire (£40,000), and implores the Apostolic benediction “on the suffering soul of her deceased husband.” —One hundred years ago, Friday, January 12, the first white settlement was made in Santa Clara valley, at which time Father Tomas de la Pena, a priest of the Order of St. Francis, established the mission at Santa Clara. The Jews in this country do not favor the scheme of founding an Israelitish kingdom in Palestine. The Jewish Messenger, of New York, says: Our Hebrew countrymen would for nothing in the world ever renounce their beautiful title of American citizens. The official “Statistical Abstract,” issued from British India, gives the following census of the religions of its population: The total population is about 100,000,000. Of the whole number 39,000,000 are Hindoos; 41,000,000, Mohammedans; 3,000,000, Buddhists; 1,000,000, Sikhs; and 900,000, Christians. —MM. de Rothschild and Montefiore have a number of schools, a hospital, and other philanthropic institutions on Mount Zion, at Jerusalem, and have now added a printing office, from which a work has just been issued treating of the Holy Land. This is the first book which has ever been printed in Palestine. —On the 21st of May next the fiftieth anniversary of the elevation of the present Pope, Pius IX., to the episcopacy, is to be celebrated at Rome. Circulars have been sent abroad soliciting contributions in money and other gifts in honor of the occasion. The gifts are to be exhibited at the Vatican, and the names of the contributors bound up in an illuminated album. On the day of the celebration there is to be a grand jubilee festival. Mrs. General Sherman was the recipient of the circulars sent to this country. —The Japanese government now tolerates all religions, and some of the native papers are advocating religious equality. The movement is said to be supported by the general opinion of the country. Several of the Mikado’s ministers are claimed as advocates of a separation of church and State. The Christian community in Japan has recently sustained a severe loss in the death of Hatakeyama Yoshinari, one of the first young Japanese who came to this country to be educated. He graduated at Rutgers’ College, and became director of the Imperial College at Tokio.