News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 21, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 49.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—There are in Burmah 502 Baptist Churches, with over 28,000 communicants, and some 70,000 adherents.

—The first convention of the so-called National Sabbath Union was held in Washington City, December 11 to 13.

—Missionaries in the Sandwich Islands must, if they would reach all the people, preach the gospel in five different languages.

—Seventy thousand Italians and 30,000 Spaniards in New York City are said to be almost entirely destitute of Protestant religious instruction.

—It is thought that the membership of the Protestant churches of the United States is over one-fifth of the total population of the country.

—Bishop Hurst, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, says that there are in Mexico 3,000,000 people who never saw a copy of the holy Scriptures, and yet Mexico is called a Christian country.

—English foreign missionary societies report 1,361 stations, 4,258 out-stations, 2,148 male missionaries, 408 female missionaries, 18,226 native helpers, 258,868 communicants, and incomes aggregating $4,019,921.

—The Catholic Review makes the statement that in 1830 the Catholic population of the United States was only 50,000, and that now it is nearly ten millions, or two hundred times what it was fifty-eight years ago.

—A late dispatch from Rome says that the Pope proposes to establish diplomatic relations with Russia the same as with Germany, a Russian Minister being sent to the Vatican, but no Nuncio to St. Petersburg.

—Less than two years ago King Mwanga, of Uganda, Africa, burned scores of Christians on the stake; now, however, the interdict upon Christianity has been removed, and English missionaries hold their meetings within sight of the king's palace.

—Having tried voluntary attendance at chapel for four years, the Harvard faculty is meditating a change. At the last meeting of the overseers it was resolved to request the Committee on Government to consider the advisability of making attendance upon daily prayers and upon recitations and lectures compulsory.