RELIGIOUS NEWS AND NOTES.
—Spurgeon will not marry one of his church to an unbeliever. —Strenuous attempts of the Evengelicals in Ireland to suppress ritualism have failed in every instance. —Pittsburg, Pa., is afflicted with an attack of the "current religion." She has prohibited the running of street cars on Sunday, and repudiated her bonds! —It is a most interesting fact that there is not one infidel book in the Welsh language; the Bible is everywhere studied and prized. And co-incident is the fact that popery has never been able to get a foothold there. —Mr. Moody says, "If I see a Sabbath-school teacher five minutes late he falls 50 per cent in my estimation at once. If he does not shake hands with his scholars I take off the other 50 per cent. There's a good deal of gospel in shaking hands. Get acquainted with the children." —In a stirring appeal to the Methodists, written by Dr. Steele at the request of some of his fellow-laborers, he says: "Our power to sway and save the masses has declined. The time has fully come for looking this fact squarely in the face, ascertaining the cause, and applying the remedy." We truly hope they may be successful. —The Christian Union calls for "a moral quarantine," not to keep out Chinese lepers and pagan prostitutes, but German Socialists—men whom Germany, it says, can no longer endure and who are to be shipped to America by thousands. They are more dangerous than the Chinese, because they become citizens, and have a voice in shaping the actions and destiny of the nation. —The chairman of the Baptist Union, England, calls for young men to enter the ministry who are able to support themselves out of private resources. He says, "Voluntaryism will have to take this higher form." This will exactly suit the covetous, though perhaps wealthy church member, but it will not agree with the divine order, that they who preach the gospel shall live thereby. —The San Francisco Bulletin complains that the churches change their pastors too often, and, inquiring into the cause of dissatisfaction, says, "We have built churches more rapidly than we can fill them; we have put them too near each other and too far from the homes of the people expected to fill them; and we have constructed them on so elaborate a scale that they are weighed down with debt, and belong rather to the world than to the Lord." —Dr. Newman, who left the church of England for that of Rome, speaking of the former church, says, "I have no wish to see it overthrown while it is what it is, and while we are so small a body. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of many congregations for which it ministers, I will do nothing against it. While Catholics are so weak in England it is doing our work; and though it does us harm in a measure, at present the balance is in our favor." The church of England has done heavy recruiting work for the Romanists of late.