p. 750 | News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 8, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 47.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Cumberland Presbyterians now number-about 150,000.

—Yale and Amherst Colleges have put the Bible on the list of elective studies.

—China, with its teeming millions of people, has 800 missionaries and only 25,000 professed Christians.

—The Jewish Ministers' Association of America began its semi-annual convention in New York on the 28th ult.

—The New Zealand Methodist advocates independence for New Zealand Methodism, which is now joined to Australia.

—More than 100,000 sermons are distributed each week among the non-church-going people of Berlin, by a force of 2,000 colporters.

—A German paper is authority for the statement that at Vienna last year no less than three hundred and sixty-three Jews became Christians.

—It is estimated that there are in the city of Chicago over 50,000 Swedes, whose religious wants are only partially supplied by nine Lutheran Churches.

—The Protestants in Prussia number 18,243,587, or 64.42 per cent. of the total population; the Catholics, 9,621,654, or 33.07 per cent.; 366,543, or 1.30 per cent., are Jews.

—The Episcopal Church claims to have in Virginia a colored membership of 6,000. The colored members of the same communion in West Virginia number 2,500.

—At a recent Unitarian meeting, one of the speakers said that the requirements of the Unitarians of their ministers are that "they should be cultured, eloquent, and religiously inclined."

—It is predicted that during the year 1888 the Northern Presbyterians will score a membership of 700,000, and they will raise a million for foreign missions, and another million for ministerial relief.

—In Lutheran Sweden 98 out of every 100 of the people can read and write. In Roman Catholic Italy, Austria, France, and Spain, only 25 out of every 100 can read or write. Comment is unnecessary.

—In 1850, in that part of our country known as the Northwest, there were no more than ten Scandinavian pastors—namely, two Swedes and eight Norwegians. Now, there are no less than 570 Scandinavian pastors, over 1,600 congregations, with a communicant membership of about 170,000.