Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
—An anti-church league has been formed in Austria. —The Biennial Conference of the Evangelical Alliance will be held in St. Louis, October 29, 1879. —There are said to be 100,000 persons in "holy orders" in the Russian Church, many of them reduced to beggary. —The Friends' Mission in Mexico has the most extensive publishing house of evangelical literature in the Spanish language in all Spanish America. —A new Protestant sect, distinguished like the Shakers, by their physical extravagances, has appeared in Westphalia, the proselytes being chiefly women. —"No millennium till Christ comes," is the subject for an essay by Eld. A. J. Frost at the Ministers' Conference of the Baptist Convention in Oakland, May 12. —A prophetic conference, on the doctrine of the second advent, was held in Sweden, in Norrkoping, March 4-6. It is reported to have been a meeting of great interest. —The N. Y. Tablet, Catholic, says of the Talmage trial,—"As a sensation it is undoubtedly the best hit in the whole career of sensationalism to which the accused has devoted his life." —The publisher of the Revolution Francaise, in Paris, has been sentenced in default to pay a fine of 6,000 francs and to eight months imprisonment for a scurrilous article against Catholicity. —The Watchman speaks of the Brooklyn Presbytery in the Talmage trial as being "remarkable for its explosions of passion, for its cheers, for its hisses, for its laughter, and for its general unruliness." —Dr. Kemper, Episcopalian, concerning the question of church music and choirs, said: "I always tell the young clergymen to keep clear of the music question, for it will only bring them into trouble." —Mr. Talmage and Mr. Hathaway have "made up" their difficulty, and the defence tried to have withdrawn the specification in which their difficulty was involved. But the prosecution refused on the ground that questions of veracity are involved, which cannot be thus set aside. —"Rev. James M. Whiton, Ph. D.," was installed pastor of a Congregational Church in Newark. N. J., by a council of which Dr. Porter, Pres. of Yale College was chairman. Mr. Whiton plainly avowed his faith on the future of the wicked, to the following effect: "My conclusion is that they, the irrecoverable portion of mankind, under the destructive power of their own sins, will ultimately perish—will ultimately cease to exist. And I draw this conclusion from a large number of considerations." —Dr. Leonard Bacon, in an article in the Independent, says,—In the Presbyterian denomination there have been within my memory some famous trials for heresy. My recollection is that in such trials the question has been not, "what is the truth of God?" but, "what is the doctrine of the Presbyterian church?" Not, "what does the Bible say?" but, "what do our Standards say?" To appeal from the Standards to "the only rule which God hath given whereby we may glorify and enjoy him" would be a grand impertinence. —A correspondent of the Pacific gives a doleful account of the state of society in the Sandwich Islands, but another writer in the same paper says : "If you wish to know where Pandemonium is to be found, just go on the Sabbath to the Contra Costra Laundry grounds, occupied in part by a baseball club and cursed every Sabbath by the playing of their games, the cheering and shouting of the God-defying multitude who gather to witness their skill and partake of the other evil spirits dealt out at their bar." Sunday is a lively day in all places of amusement and sin in Oakland. —The Church Advocate says, there are one thousand Chinese converts in San Francisco. The converts have abandoned their idols and heathen vices, have come into the fellowship and under the rules of the different denominations, and by their consistent Christian lives, have shown the depth and sincerity of their religious professions. The evidences that are accepted as guarantee of religious character in the members of other Churches are to be found in these. Despite all the bold assertions to the contrary, the Chinese are susceptible to religious influences, and scores of the most reliable Christian white men of San Francisco can testify to the progress made amongst this people by missionary effort. —A South Bend, Ind., special says : Notre Dame Catholic University is entirely burned down. The Infirmary, Old Men's Home, Music Hall and Mimm's Hall, adjoining, was also burned. No lives were lost. The loss is estimated at from $150,000 to $200,000. Insurance of the University building, $60,000. The circulating library, of 25,000 volumes, valued at $10,000, seventeen pianos and other musical instuments in Music Hall, were burned. The institution was one of the largest of the kind in the West, and was founded by Father Sorin, chief of the Order of Brothers of the Sacred Heart, headquarters at Paris. Emperor Napoleon was a warm friend of the institution, and made it several fine presents, including a chime of bells, one of the largest on the continent.