Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
-After prolonged debates the Great Council at Geneva has postponed the further consideration of a separation of church and State until next May. -It is said the publishers cannot print Canon Farrer's "Life of St. Paul" fast enough to supply the demand. The first edition was sold before it left the press. -On Sunday morning Oct. 19, the unusually large number of 280 persons were admitted to membership in St. John's Methodist Episcopal church, Brooklyn, N. Y. -The Rhode Island Baptist Convention, after a warm discussion, admitted delegates from the Second Baptist church of Newport, which is regarded as "open communion." -By the intercession of the Pope, Prince Napoleon and his wife, Clotilda, have come together after a separation of seven years. The Pope evidently has no love for the Republic. -To a young brother complaining that his field was so small, an old preacher replied: "You have as large a congregation, perhaps as you will want to account for at the day of judgment." -Prof. Christliebe, of Bonn University, Germany, has been invited by the Yale Faculty to deliver next year's annual course of lectures on "Preaching," before the students of the Theological Seminary. -The Religious Herald pronounces dram drinking and prohibition as both evil; "but we are not wise enough to decide which is worse!" We readily decide that the religion heralded by such a teacher is the "worse" in its influence. -The Archbishop of Moscow has publicly taught that the emperor of Russia is the vicar of God, inspired and infallible in his utterances, and to be obeyed as God himself. Thus the Greek church vies with the Latin in self-exaltation against the Most High. -There is danger in written sermons. Dr. Lorimer read one which was greatly praised, but which was afterwards found in an older author. The Dr. consoles himself with the fact that "they all do it." But is not such deception a sure means to destroy the influence of the pulpit. -At Andover Theological Seminary no students, except college graduates, are hereafter to be received without a thorough examination. If any enter after the beginning of the junior year, they must pass an examination in the studies passed over by the class into which they wish to enter. -The Baptist Home Missionary says: "Better than your will. If you have money, the interest of which you may require for yourself during your life, but at your death you wish to devote to the objects of the Society, the Society will receive it, and give you a bond securing your semi-annual interest as long as you live." -The Bishop of Manchester says there are more than 10,000 clergymen in the Anglican Church who have no benefice. And if they should go out into the "highways and hedges," and preach to the benighted masses, without their canonical robes, they would be silenced and condemned. Such is religion when up-held by the State. -Warren F. Draper, the Andover publisher, has a book in press entitled "The Logic of Christian evidences," which is described as "an attempt to re-adjust the perspective of the old-time evidences, so as to meet the demands of modern discussions in science." The "demands of modern discussions in science" are frequently very unreasonable and unjust. -A fiercely contested difference between two Mohammedan sects is whether, in the ablution before prayers, it is right to wash from the elbow to the wrist or from the wrist to the elbow. "We are reminded of the fierce contest in the church of England as to whether the preacher should face the congregation or stand with his back to them, during certain parts of the 'service.'" -At a recent conference of the Evangelical Alliance, at Edinburgh, Dr. White, of New York, gave au interesting account of what is being done in the Southern States of America, among the freedmen, to prepare them for Christian work. "It is expected," he said, "that in a few years they will be able to provide such a supply of missionaries as would do more to Christianize Africa than could be done by any European agency with white men." -The Bishop of Oxford, in calling upon the clergy of his diocese to offer prayers for fine weather, writes: "Preachers may do well to point out that our increased ability to prognosticate the weather has not given us the slightest power to control it, and in this time of general depression to ask whether the season of marvelous prosperity which preceded it was thankfully received or profitably spent."—Will America take warning in her present prosperity? -A colored Presbyterian church in Kentucky wanted a church building; they obtained it as follows: "One of our members, a plain, ordinary man, an old bachelor, purchased the building from the German Methodists paying them $4,880 cash. I saw every dollar counted. This gentleman has been a member of the Presbyterian church nearly thirty years. He never spent five cents for a cigar, a drink of whiskey, or chew of tobacco, in his life. The act, I think, is unparalleled in the history of black men."