RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—Of the 802 churches of London, 240 are free. —Fifty thousand Russian Mennonites have determined to emigrate to the United States; 14,000 go to Kansas in the spring. —Father Kernan, the oldest Catholic priest in America, died at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, last week Monday, aged ninety-eight. —There is a Bible in the library of the University of Goettingen written on two thousand four hundred and seventy-six palm leaves. —In Calcutta eight hundred women are regularly taught in their zenanas, homes, by the ladies of the Woman’s Union Missionary Society. —The population of Ireland, by a recent computation, is 5,500,000. Of these about 1,300,000 are Protestants, and 4,200,000 Roman Catholics. —There are now 70,000 pupils in the South who are being taught by former pupils of the schools established by the American Missionary Association. —Rev. J. W. David, an American missionary, writing from Lagos, Central Africa, says that he has found a little group of converts who have remained faithful during thirteen years, in which time they have had no pastor or teacher among them. They sent messengers a ten days’ journey to plead for the help of a missionary. —Yale Seminary has invited Rev. R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, England, to fill the chair of the Lyman Beecher Lectureship on Preaching next year. Mr. Dale is one of the leading preachers among the English Congregationalists, and has of late been giving a series of addresses in different parts of England in favor of the separation of Church and State. As an author, he is known widely through his recent work on the Atonement. —A most remarkable awakening is experienced among the Jews in Northern Africa. Rev. Mr. Benoel, writing from Oran, Algeria, says that he has never known so great was their interest to understand the Christian faith that they crowded the place of worship, both Jews and Jewesses and even rabbis were among the number, and after an hour and a half service reluctantly left the place. The writer regards it as the most marvelous awakening among the Jews since the day of Pentecost. —“We shall not flee to France to escape partisanship,” says the Christian Union. “The Republicans, incensed by the persecutions of Republican newspapers, passed in the House of Deputies a motion in favor of abrogating the law under which they were persecuted. The Premier thereupon told them that he had been deprived of all power to prosecute anti-Republican journals, whereat, aghast at their blunder, they reconsidered the vote and adopted a motion leaving the law in force provisionally. What is liberty worth if it does not allow the majority to shut the mouths of the minority.” —A young lady who claims to be the daughter of the late Cardinal Antonelli, is stirring the Vatican by threats to sue for a share in her father’s estate. Roman celibacy does not bar priests from fatherhood—especially cardinals. We clip the foregoing paragraph from an Eastern exchange. In Roman Catholic countries in which Protestantism has no appreciable influence, the priests live in open adultery and do not lose caste in the Church. Travelers, a few years ago, assured us that in Mexico it was the custom for the padre (priest) to have his mujer (woman) and to raise a family of children, and the people thought it quite proper. But a lawful marriage with the mother of the priest’s children would have subjected him to exclusion and the anathemas of the Church.—Cal. Christian Advocate.