Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
It should be warm—a living altar coal,
To melt the icy heart, and charm the soul;
A lifeless, dull harangue, however read,
Will never rouse the soul, or raise the dead.
It should be simple, practical, and clear;
No fine-spun theory to please the ear.
No curious lay, to tickle lettered pride,
And leave the poor and plain unedified.
It should be tender and affectionate,
As, his warm theme who wept lost Salem's fate,
The fiery law, with words of love allayed,
Will sweetly warn, and awfully persuade. —The Bible, complete or in part; is now published in 226 languages. —The Pope is about to fill the vacancies in the "Sacred College," by the appointment of twelve new cardinals. —At a meeting of the Ladies Anti-Polygamy Society, Salt Lake, it was stated that "Brigham Young owned a large distillery." —The Baptist ministers of Chicago have extended a cordial welcome to the Rev. Arthur Mursell, of England, who visits them to lecture. —"O LORD, bless the brother to whom we have listened so patiently," is the way a colored brother in Virginia prayed for a Philadelphia preacher. —Nine Protestant ministers of different denominations recently visited king Humbert of Italy. The king said, "I don't understand so many colors, so many shades." —A little girl in Sunday-school being asked, "What is charity?" replied, "It is giving to the poor all the old stuff you don't want yourself." She learned this by observation. —Complaints come from Idaho of Mormon outrages. Some who were engaged in the Mountain Meadow massacre have settled there, and have not fully changed their habits. —"Formerly one sermon converted 3000 sinners," said Elder Burgess of Butler University (Ind.), in a sermon recently; "now it takes 3000 sermons to convert one sinner." —Out of 3,500,000 persons in London, there are church sittings for only 1,082,826, not quite a third, leaving over 2,417,000 without any possibility of hearing preaching of any kind. —The Christian Register says: "It is no sign of wisdom or breadth for a man to say he has no creed, and it is no honor for a church to affirm that it believes nothing in particular." —Dr. J. R. Graves, of Tennessee, a well known publisher, and author of the book, "The Great Iron Wheel," is preaching this week in the Central Baptist Church, Oakland. —The Chronicle contains the reports of eight games of base ball played on Sunday, Jan. 19, in San Francisco. Also of the military sharpshooting on the San Bruno range the same day. —It cost the Methodist denomination over $100,000 to establish the St. Louis Central Advocate and the Atlanta Methodist Advocate. But they have become important helps to their cause. —A Catholic priest, writing in the Interior severely condemns the gambling resorted to in the recent cathedral fair in New York. And the priest in turn is severely condemned by the Catholic papers. —The English revisers of the authorized version of the New Testament completed their work December 15th, and are now awaiting suggestions which their American companions may have to offer. —The salaries of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church are $3,000 each per annum, and an allowance for house rent. The same sum is paid to book agents, and official editors, in New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. Other editors receive salaries varying from $1,500 to $2,500. —"Sermons" are becoming more and more mere farces. One reported in San Francisco recently was on the subject of "Economy," and one in Oakland, subject, "Early Settlement of California." About as much gospel in them as in Josh Billings' aphorisms, or in Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad. —The Congregationalist defines its faith as evangelical, opposed to annihilation. The Independent says: "It is well aware that among the Congregationalists for whom it has the most admiration abroad, are R. W. Dale, J. Baldwin Brown, and Edward White, every one of whom denies the eternal conscious misery of the lost. It is setting up a definition of 'Evangelical' belief which does not hold in Germany or England." —The Christian at Work says: "There seems to be one point on which our theological seminaries are sadly deficient. The teaching of the dead languages and the old philosophies are all right, but the students should also be taught common sense and human nature, and how to deal with men and every day church affairs. No one could do a better thing than to endow in some of them a professorship of common sense." —Somebody thus sums up the doings of "those Christians of Europe." The Czar gives the bloodthirsty chief of the Afghans a sword with the inscription, "May God give the victory over the infidels," and the English sell the Asiatic pagans the prettiest little idols, made in the most artistic manner of Glasgow, Sheffield, and Birmingham. The same cargo for India often includes, say, 20,000 New Testaments, 5,000 complete Bibles, a fine assortment of 10,000 idols, 20 missionaries, 3 opium merchants, 3 spies, 2 dealers in first-class idols, 1 bishop, and 4 preachers of the Anglican persuasion.