RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—The colored Baptists of Kentucky have decided to establish a normal theological school at Louisville, and an agent has been appointed to raise $25,000 for that purpose. —One of the directors of the swindling bank of Glasgow, who is now in prison for falsifying the records and reports, was so very pious that he would not read the Monday morning papers because work was done on them on Sunday! —The German clergy resolutely oppose any concession being made by the Pope to Germany. They await, says the Rome correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, an explanation of the German Government's ecclesiastical policy before pledging themselves to accord the slightest concession. —The Lord Bishop of Tuam, Ireland, in a recent address to his clergy, declared that Ritualism in that diocese was known only to them by report. The clergy of the province being in constant conflict with the genuine article, are not likely to be caught by the attractions of counterfeit popery. —Dissenters in Russia number over 15,000,000. The Stundists, who have the same relation to the Greek Church that the Methodists do to the Church of England, are increasing so rapidly that the Minister of Public Worship has dispatched a commission to Odessa to inquire into the circumstances attending the growth of that and other heterodox sects. —In 1780, when Continental money was in circulation, a pastor in the village of Long Meadow, Mass., had a salary of $22,500 a year, while the sexton got $2,000. —Jewish religious papers have been publishing reports of cruelties perpetrated by Bulgarian peasants, some of which are almost too much for belief. One story is that the president of the synagogue in Kasanlyk having been killed, his blood was caught in a bowl and mixed with the blood of a number of dogs. This liquor the Jews of the town, who were driven together with thrusts and blows, were forced to drink; and it is said that only the arrival of a body of Russian troops saved them from death. —Maynooth College, at Maynooth, about fifteen miles north-west of Dublin, was almost entirely destroyed by fire on the 1st instant. All the valuable books were saved. The college was founded during the ministry of Mr. Pitt, in 1795, by an act of the Irish Parliament, in order, it is stated, that Irish priests might be educated at home, and saved from the revolutionary influences which then pervaded Western Europe. It received an annual grant from Parliament until 1870, when it was liberated from State control by the payment of the lump sum of about $1,800,000. There were usually 500 students and 20 senior scholars at the college. —Though Roman Catholicism is the State religion of Brazil, all other faiths are tolerated, yet in building their places of worship the "heretics" must not give them "the exterior form of temples." Religious persecution is expressly forbidden, still the clergy exercise an enormous influence throughout the empire. Their pay is poor, and their dependence on the State so abject, that the sacred office does not attract to it the highest talent, or even morals. The priests are for the most part very ignorant, and consider religion and morals best advanced by parading through the streets tawdry dressed images of saints, followed by a straggling procession of devotees, lay and ecclesiastical. —The Pacific Methodist confesses itself "humiliated" by "such ugly-looking statistics" as those of the Methodist churches in California for the ecclesiastical year 1877–8, according to which there is "a seeming decrease of membership all around," and asks, "What can account for this poverty of results? There have been some revivals," it says. "The ministry as a body have labored with their customary zeal and diligence, there has been no plague or pestilence to decimate our population, no exodus to foreign lands, and yet the late California Conference of the M. E. Church reported a net loss of 792 probationers with an addition to the members in full standing of 75. . . . A tremendous waste of money and effort, and the Lord's work languishing."