News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 29, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 5.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Two Brahmins were recently baptized in Calcutta.

—It is stated that there are 1,200 towns west of the Mississippi which have no Protestant preaching.

—During the past year the foreign missionary societies of the world report a gain of 308,643 communicants.

—More than ten thousand copies of the New Testament have been sold and given away among the Fiji Islanders.

—The American Bible Society has sent a stock of Bibles, printed in all languages, to the New Orleans Exposition, to be placed on sale.

—The London Tablet is authority for the statement that the ordinary expenses of the Holy See amount to 5,000,000 francs annually.

—The Russian Government has closed numerous Catholic convents managed by the Sisters of Charity in Russian Poland, because they favored Polish patients and tried to make proselytes.

—An earnest advocate of the adoption of Sunday as the Jewish Sabbath, proposes that a convention of representative Jews be held in Paris or Jerusalem in the year 1900 to consider the matter.

—Sixty years' missionary work of the American Sunday-school Union in the South, has resulted in the organization of more than fourteen thousand schools, into which have been gathered 822,327 teachers and scholars.

—The Y. M. C. Association of Brooklyn, N. Y., has developed a new feature in its work. An "acquaintance meeting" is held once a week at the close of the regular meetings. We suggest that many churches might follow the example with profit.

—An exchange says: "In the public schools of Greece the four gospels of the New Testament are used as a reader by the children of the most advanced classes of the primary department, and the new Minister of Education proposes to extend their use into the higher schools."

—The Catholic Monitor urges the church to make an early effort to colonize California with Eastern members of the faith. It says: "The sect known as 'Lutherans' have colonized in Fresno County, and the 'Campbellites' have colonized on 38,000 acres of railroad lands in Shasta County. It would be a good thing for Catholics in the East if they could be induced to colonize on such lands, as there is no better climate on this continent than California presents, and in a few years more the cry will be, 'Too late! too late! ye cannot enter now.'"