News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1889

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—There are 68,973 German Methodist Episcopal members and probationers in the United States, Germany and Switzerland, and 74,696 Sunday-school scholars.

—It is stated that there is not a single colored Roman Catholic priest in the United States; several young men of African blood are preparing to enter the priesthood.

—Marshall Booth, of the Salvation Army, claims that during the last twelve years over one million men and women have been rescued from the slums, and transformed into self-supporting, sober, Christian citizens, by the work of the army.

—The Church of Scotland has got her first deaconess in Lady Grisell Baillie. She was publicly set apart to the office in Bowden Church on a recent Sunday. At the last monthly meeting of the Edinburg Presbytery, it was reported that two other ladies had applied to the Session of St. Cuthbert's, asking to be also set apart to the same office.

—The Catholic Review is authority for the statement that a late decision of the Roman Congregation is to the effect that "to gain the Indulgences attached to the Officium Parvum B. M. Virginis (the little office of Our Lady), it is necessary to say it in Latin as it is found in the Roman Breviary, and it is not advisable, so the Cardinals have decided, to extend the Indulgences to translations." If it were indeed true that any benefit could be derived from this idolatrous mummery it would be a cruel thing to withhold it from those who have no knowledge of Latin, but as it is, probably the unlearned may survive the blow.