Religious News and Notes.
—Dr. Newman, of England, has at last been made a cardinal. —No Catholic church is permitted to substitute gas for candles. —In Africa there are 182,000 native members of Protestant churches. —It is said the Zulus have not the Bible complete translated into their language. —The Imperial Government in China has ordered the closing of the Buddhist nunneries. —Moy Jim Kee has opened a Christian mission house in Mott street, New York, for the Chinese. —Rev. Edward Palmer regularly fills the Presbyterian pulpit in Barnwell, S. C., and his age is 91 years. —Robert Laird Collier has accepted a call to the Unitarian church of Bradford, Yorkshire, England. —The oldest Presbyterian minister in the United States is in Vienna, Mich., Noah M. Wells, in his 97th year. —Forty Presbyterians voted, Yes, and sixty-four, No, on the overture for reduced representation in the General Assembly. —Major Whittle, the friend and co-laborer of P. P. Bliss, has been holding successful revival meetings in Syracuse, N. Y. —Prof. Dr. Patton, of Chicago, has received a call to the chair of Apologetical Theology in the Presbyterian College of London. —Rev. G. D. Turino of Italy is visiting the Presbyterian churches in the United States as representative of the Waldensian church of Italy. —The French clergy have been warned that they will be punished if they continue to indulge in attacks upon the Republic from the pulpit. —It now appears that John Wesley's first hymn book was printed in America. A copy has been found, dated 1737—earlier than that first printed in England. —The mania for “show” in the churches is thus hit in the Norristown Herald:—“It requires a new spring bonnet to develop the latent Christianity of a woman.” —The English Wesleyans are increasing their “Thanksgiving Fund” so that there is a prospect of putting all their denominational schemes in good financial condition. —Bishops Scott, Simpson, Foster, Bowman, Peck, Wylie, Merrill, Haven, and Andrews were in Wheeling, W. Va., May 18, attending the M. E. Bishops' semi-annual meeting. —The Baptist State Convention passed resolutions endorsing Dr. Graves of Tennessee, he having been challenged by the Disciples of California to a discussion of their differences. —A sheriff in Stephensville, Texas, with a posse of citizens, undertook to arrest a man at a prayer meeting, but was resisted with revolvers, and the “church militant” triumphed; the arrest was not made. —The school and mission work of the Friends among the Indians is carried on mostly among the children, the adults being too strongly attached to their old habits of life to be successfully reached. —The civil authorities of Prague, Austria, have directed that no more meetings be held by the Missionaries of the American Board, under penalties of fines and imprisonment. Very little encouragement for missionary work is found in Austria. —Dr. Shedd writes from Hamadan, Persia, that one of the oldest colonies of Jews in the world, in Hamadan, is agitated with the question, “Is not Jesus the Messiah?” The whole city is moved; four of the chief men have been baptized, and many others are confessing Christ. —Dr. Holland, in Scribner for May, favoring choirs in churches, says,—“The churches are full, as a rule, where the music is excellent. This fact may not be very flattering to the preachers, but it is a fact, and it is quite a legitimate question whether a church has a right to surrender any attraction that will give it a hold upon the attention of the world, especially if that attraction is an elevating one, and in the direct line of Christian influence.” —Good Words says of Japan: It would be hasty to leap to the conclusion that Japan will become rapidly Christianized. Christianity is a word of terror to nine-tenths of the people. A resident told me that an excellent servant he had from the country used to fly past the door like an arrow if the family knelt at prayer; they were weaving a charm, she thought, that would bewitch her; and a native gentleman mentioned, as if it had been almost beyond hope, that the people in the country were ceasing to speak of Christianity as witchcraft, and were expressing curiosity to learn what it was. Centuries of denunciation have inspired a terror that is slow to abate. Nor are the people a religious people. Their temples are poorly attended but their demeanor is little reverent; but they have a regard for their priest, and with the priest it is a question of life or death. Christianity finds the priesthood an implacable and by no means contemptible foe. The young men who have been in Christian countries seldom profess Christianity on their return, and some of them are distinctly hostile, and have adopted the negative criticism that they found in Europe. There is not much of what at first sight seems to favor the missionary that is really on his side.