News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 14, 1889

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The Bible has been translated into more than 300 different languages.

—The Mennonites, a German religious denomination, have decreed that no person can now belong to that church if he has a life insurance policy hanging over his head.

—A bill is now before Congress providing for an increase of the corps of army chaplains to 100. The number now allowed by law is 34. Three-fourths of the garrisons are without chaplains.

—Nearly five years since the Bible was made accessible to Japanese scholars by being published in Chinese characters with diacritical marks, but within the past year it has been given to that nation in their own language.

—During the past year the American Bible Society issued in this and other lands 1,504,647 copies of the Scriptures. The total number issued since the organization of the society, seventy-two years ago, is 49,829,563 copies.

—Rev. Wilber F. Crafts has resigned his pastorate in New York City, to accept the position of field secretary of the American Sunday Union, which met recently in Washington. Gen. O. O. Howard is a member of the Executive Committee.

—The Congregationalists have about one twenty-fourth of the so-called evangelical church members in the United States, and therefore feel that they are responsible for the religious instruction of about two and a half million people in this country.

—The Church Progress (Catholic) says that four Catholic missionaries have recently been sent to the Congo from Belgium. Those who have read the history of Catholic missions on the Congo in the past will know about what to expect as the result of like efforts now.