RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
By Editor
—At the close of 1877 the Presbyterian church in New Zealand numbered 41 congregations. —Every workman on the Paris Exposition building has received a present of a Bible in the French language. —The value, over all incumbrances, of the property belonging to the Church of England is estimated at $600,000,000. —The General Theological Library of Boston now contains 11,938 volumes and 16,500 pamphlets. Its property is estimated at $39,992. —The Wesleyan Methodists have recently dedicated a new church at Durban, Natal, South Africa. It cost $25,000. —Thirty-six Mexicans have professed religion, and joined the Presbyterian church in the city of Mexico. A number of Mexicans have been baptized. —St. Isaac's church, St. Petersburg, which was nearly fifty years in building, is one of the most remarkable of modern temples. It cost nearly as much as all the churches in England. —The Methodist Episcopal church has built in the last ten years 4978 church edifices, at a cost of $30,000,000. The value of its entire church property is $70,000,000, on which is an aggregate debt of about $5,000,000. —The copy of the Bible which Martin Luther used daily, and the leaves of which are covered with annotations made with his own hand, is now in the Brandenburg museum, which gave for it about $450. The Bible was printed in Basle, in 1509, and is bound in leather and is in good preservation. —In England and Wales there is one clergyman to 718 of the population; in the United States there is one to each 879; in Russia there is a priest to each 323 of the population; in France there is one priest, monk or minister to 235 laymen; in Italy there is one to 143 of the people, and in Spain one to 54.