News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 23, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 40.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—There are 65,000 clergymen in the United States. —The Book of Discipline of the Irish Presbyterian Church is now being revised. —A religious sect has been discovered in Corea, one of whose tenets is to kill all who disbelieve its doctrines. —According to F. M. Rains, the State evangelist, the Disciples of Kansas will dedicate fifty church buildings in that State this year. —A Conference has been organized in connection with the missionary work of the M. E. Church in Japan. It consists of thirteen foreign missionaries and nineteen native preachers. —The city of Rome has probably a greater proportion of ecclesiastics among its people than any other city in the world. Among its 180,357 inhabitants there are, besides the pope and his cardinals, 34 bishops, 1,333 priests, 2,404 monks, 1,872 members of various orders, 2,700 nuns, and 850 lay brethren. —Wm. Taylor, who was elected by the last Methodist General Conference, missionary bishop of Africa, intends to start for that continent before December. He hopes to take twenty men with him, and, starting from the Atlantic Coast, advance to the interior, and establish a line of mission stations across the continent.

SECULAR.

—The expenses of the Nile expedition will reach about £10,000,000. —Women are to be admitted to lectures in the University College, Toronto. —Twenty-one houses were burned in the town of Liberty, Va., near Lynchburg, Oct. 12. —The Bennett-Mackay cable was landed on Coney Island (N. Y.) at one o'clock on the 18th. —Philadelphia has eighty-five institutions that care for dependent and neglected children. —Six army officers and two women were executed in St. Petersburg, last week, for political offenses. —Wm. H. Vanderbilt has given $500,000 to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, of New York, as a building fund. —It is reported that the French have gained another victory in Tonquin, and that 450 Chinese fell in the engagement. —It is stated that a citizen of Columbus, Ohio, has had over 200 men fined for using profane language on the street. —Eleven hundred and fifty Chinamen sailed from San Francisco on the City of Peking, for their native land, October 18. —J. J. Hedges, a lawyer of Portland, Oregon, has been sentenced to four years in the penitentiary for forging a client's name. —There are 11,000 saloons in Berlin. The Gazette of Cologne says that 10,000 persons die of delirium tremens every year in Germany. —On the 5th inst., a Chinese mob at Shanghai destroyed the missionaries' houses and the custom-house records. No lives were lost. —Five thousand troops have been furnished to the governor of the State of Tolentino (Mexico), for the suppression of brigandage. —A bill has been introduced into the Vermont Legislature by the opponents of capital punishment by hanging, providing for the execution of murderers by electricity. —Since the great fire of 1871 there has been an average of $16,000,000 a year laid out on new buildings in Chicago. The amount expended this year will be about $20,000,000. —The British Government has decided to expend £1,000,000 on its fortifications in Aden, Singapore, and Hongkong. Orders have been sent from the War Office to hasten the work. —The leading physicians of Canada say that that country has never been so scourged with diphtheria as at present. In some places the schools have been closed on account of it. —A spark from a railroad engine set fire to 250 bales of cotton that was piled on the depot platform at Barnesville, Ga., Oct. 17, and the flames, spreading, destroyed nearly the whole town.

—Twelve years ago there were only 2,000,000 pupils registered in the elementary schools of Great Britain; now there are registered over 5,000,000. —Yreka, Cal., was treated to a storm of rain, wind, thunder, and lightning, on the 16th inst. One residence was partially destroyed by lightning. —A Foo Chow dispatch to the London Times says: "Another engagement has been fought on the shore of Tamsui. Three thousand Chinese were killed. The French loss was trifling." —The Russian Government has decided to fortify Vladivostok and construct harbors and docks in the bay of Okhotsk. It has been decided also to strengthen the Russian fleet in the Pacific. —The St. James Gazette says that it has indisputable authority for saying that the country (England) is approaching a crisis in Indian affairs, in comparison with which the Sepoy rebellion of 1857 will be commonplace. —A bootblack fifteen years old, who was arrested in St. Louis on the 18th inst., says that he was one of a party of six boys who started the fire that destroyed so many lumber yards in Cleveland, O., on the 6th of September. —On Saturday, Oct. 11, an attempt was made to blow up the Parliament Building at Quebec. There were two explosions, causing damage to the amount of $25,000. Four men, supposed to be the guilty parties, have been arrested. —The stage running between Cloverdale and Mendocino City, Cal., was stopped by masked men on the 8th inst., and the express box robbed of $4,200. Two of the robbers have been captured, and $2,700 in coin recovered. —Minister Ferry recently denied that France was on bad terms with England, but said that France was prepared to make arrows out of every sort of wood, to fire at England unless she gave France satisfaction in Egypt. —On the 18th inst., an express train on the Louisville, New Albany, and Chicago Railroad, struck a defective rail, near Greencastle, Ind., and was thrown into the ditch. The train immediately took fire, and all the cars, and the baggage, were consumed. No one was seriously injured. —Alabama has now twenty-three cotton mills, Georgia sixty-two, North Carolina ninety-two, South Carolina eighty-one, Tennessee thirty-three, Virginia fourteen, Maryland twenty-four, Louisiana seven, Mississippi eleven, Texas six, Kentucky five, Arkansas four, and Florida two. —An exchange says: "The Iowa School Fund has increased until it is now nearly $5,000,000. The illiteracy of the population is the lowest of any State in the Union, and there are probably more newspapers published in the State, according to the population, than in any other State." —The Christian Union states that a rough estimate puts the number of the inmates in all prisons and reformatory institutions in this country, and those dependent on them or united by interest to them, and included under the general title of the criminal class, at about 700,000, or one in seventy of the entire population. —The Canadian Pacific Railway has just concluded a contract with the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company of Scranton, Penn., for 10,000 tons of steel rails. It is believed that this is the first time that an American company has been successful in competition with English manufacturers for steel rails delivered in Canada. —The State Superintendent of Public Instruction, of California, in his annual report, recommends that the State pay a pension of $300 a year, to all teachers of thirty years' experience. He also recommends that the State establish in each county, a work-school for practical instruction in mechanical trades. —A German statistician in speaking of the liquor traffic, says: "Germany spends between 500,000,000 and 600,000,000 francs annually for her armies, but 2,200,000,000 francs for drinks—more than four times as much. The French spend three times as much for liquors as for their soldiers, the English four times as much, and the Belgians over ten times as much." —An exchange says: "The ease with which temperance law may be enforced, when its enforcement is in the hands of earnest men, is shown by the fact that six young men of Prince Edward's Island have banished every saloon from one county of 40,000 inhabitants. In a town in this county not a single arrest for drunkenness has been made in six months, and the docket of the last circuit court did not contain a single criminal case."