Religious News and Notes.
—At last China has five miles of railroad. More is being constructed. —Mr. Moody arrived in Chicago May 13. The next day he spoke in the Rink. —At a meeting of Plymouth Church Henry C. Bowen was unanimously expelled. —The next annual meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association of the United States and Canada will be held at Toronto, Canada, July 12–16, in Shaftesbury Hall. A large attendance of delegates is expected. —The entire cost of the fountain placed by the Roman Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America upon the Centennial grounds will be $52,000. Of this amount $31,000 has been collected and paid to the contractors. —At the General Conference of the Methodists, which was held in Baltimore the 1st of May, it was reported that the net increase of ministers and members, during the last four years, had been 234,640, and the increase of churches 1,193. —The Presbytery of Oregon, during its session in the latter part of April, received a good report from the ministers who labor among the Indians on the Puyallup Reservation. They have an Indian Church of 89 members and two elders, and a Sunday-school with 100 pupils. —The Russian journals publish a long report of the Commission charged by the Physical Society of St. Petersburg to examine the phenomena of Spiritualism. The report concludes that these phenomena are the result either of unconscious movements or of conscious imposture, and that the doctrine of Spiritualism is a superstition. —Adrian Louis Rosecrans, a priest of the congregation of Saint Paul, New York, and the son of General William S. Rosecrans, died in New York, May 12. During the war he accompanied his father even to the battle field. After the war he came to California, where he was engaged in business until he joined the Paulist community of New York. He became a mission priest, and died at the age of twenty-six. —Lively discussion was agitated at a meeting of the Methodist preachers of Newark, N. J., over the case of Rev. Geo. H. Woodward, an agent of the Temperance Brotherhood, who enters saloons, on Sunday, procures drinks, cigars, etc., and then on Monday causes the sellers to be prosecuted for violating the Sunday law. Should the church sustain Woodward, himself a Sabbath law-breaker? was the question raised. One minister declared that he would not scruple to sin a little himself that great good might come. —“These seem to be good times for great church unions.” So says the Christian Union. “Pan-Presbyterianism is hardly a year old; the Pan-Anglican Church invites American Episcopalians to closer fellowship, and now the Methodists, in conference at Baltimore, resolve to appoint a commission to organize an Ecumenical Council, or World Synod of Methodism, to consider topics relating to the position, work and responsibility of the denomination in evangelizing the race.” “Much is to be gained,” says the Union, “by securing oneness of aim and method in church work, but there is danger attaching to large bodies that they may weaken individual responsibility.” Truly, union in Christ is to be prayed for, and unity of purpose will strengthen the advance of the gospel if no point of conscience is sacrificed for unity. But the unity of great bodies in the matter of creeds, while the sacredness of God's law is less and less regarded, and spirituality gradually dies from the church, is cause of no rejoicing. —One very commendable feature of the English law is that no atheist or infidel is competent to be the guardian of children and to have charge of their education. This law has again been demonstrated by the recent case of the will of the late Viscount Amberly, son of Earl Russell, an account of which we copy from the Christian Statesman:— “Mr. David Spalding is a gentleman and scholar who had for some time resided with the Amberlys, and was their most intimate friend. Viscount Amberly, in his will, named Mr. Spalding, as the sole custodian of the education of his children. When the will came before the Master of the Rolls for the testamentary nominations to be confirmed, Earl Russell objected to the carrying out of this portion of the will, on the ground that Mr. Spalding was an atheist. Mr. Spalding is not technically an atheist, but admitted a sufficient amount of heresy to warrant Earl Russell's plea that he would not bring up the children in any recognized form of religion. Mr. Spalding consulted counsel, who informed him that the case of the poet Shelley, who, while alive, was deprived of the custody of his children on similar grounds, is still the law of England, and that if he (Spalding) fought the case he would simply be saddled with the costs. The late Viscount left to Mr. Spalding the sum of £300 annually for the education of his children, and Earl Russell agreed that this should be regularly paid. It is stated that Mr. Spalding signed a paper renouncing his right to act as educator of the children.”