RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—November 22, is to be the general Thanksgiving Day throughout the dominion. —The English Roman Catholic bishops are about to revise the Douay version of the Bible. —There are twenty-nine Protestant pastors in Spain, and six Protestant churches in Madrid. —Diphtheria is so prevalent at Salisbury Mills village, N. Y., that both week-day and Sunday schools have been closed. —The Junior Class of the Yale Theological School this term will be the largest, with the exception of one, in its history. —Father John McElroy, the oldest Roman Catholic priest in this country, died in Frederick, Md., September 12, aged ninety-five. —Over a quarter of the population of Rondout, N. Y., have signed the temperance pledge. This would make not less than 6,000. —The oldest American missionary in China is now the Rev. Dr. A. P. Hopper, of the Presbyterian mission at Canton, who went out in 1844. —An exchange states that the Mormons are receiving converts from abroad; over 2,000 have landed in New York recently, bound for Salt Lake. —It is stated that there are forty-three Protestant churches in San Francisco, and of the 100,000 American population only about 15,000 attend church. —The present number of Mohammedans is reckoned at 100,000,000, and has hitherto been untouched by any energetic or systematic Christian effort. —There are 373 churches in Rome, of which 355 are Catholic, 14 Protestant and 4 Jewish. There is one Protestant church to every 20,000 of the population. —The American Baptist Home Mission Society announces its intention to open a new school at Natchez, Miss., for the education of colored preachers and teachers. —The Southern Methodists have in Virginia 93,000 members, and the Northern and Protestant Methodists swell the number to considerably over 100,000. The Episcopalians number 12,647, the Baptists 63,187, and the Presbyterians 21,712. —New Jewish synagogues have been consecrated within the past year in London, Bath, England; Waadt, Switzerland; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Linz, Austria; Bremen, Heilbrun, Germany; Ancona, Bologna, Italy; New York, Springfield and Petersburg, United States. —In a recent massacre of Christians at Eski Saghra, by the Bashi-Bazouks, and the destruction of their property, over thirty churches and five hundred schools and colleges were burned. The district is one of the richest in that part of Turkey, and contained a large proportion of Christian inhabitants. —The Methodist Episcopal church, through its Missionary, Church Extension, and Freedmen’s Aid Societies, has expended, chiefly for the colored people, $2,101,757. They have in the South thirteen institutions for higher education, with twenty-six professors, 1,500 pupils, and a property valued at $320,000. Sixty thousand colored children are now annually taught by the teachers sent out from schools and colleges.