Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
—The Conn. Legislature has passed a bill subjecting to taxation all property belonging to educational, religious and benevolent societies. —The membership of Spurgeon's church now amounts to 5166. During the past year 394 new members were received and 57 died. —The Ritualists of Boston have prepared a new "Manual of Prayer" for their own use. It is said that 10,000 copies of it have been sold. —Six witnesses have refused to testify in the Talmage trial. According to the Presbyterian code such refusal is ground for expulsion. —A "great discussion" is expected to come off the last of this month in Woodstock, Ohio, on the subject of feet-washing as a church ordinance. —There are several religious papers in this country conducted by the colored people. The colored Baptists have five, the Methodists three, and the Presbyterians one. —Miss Harriet Carter, a city missionary in Boston, has had upwards of eighty Chinese scholars the past two or three years, in connection with Chambers street Sunday-school. —Rev. John Miller, D. D., late Professor in The Theological Seminary at Princeton, has been formally deposed from the ministry for heresy, by the New Brunswick Presbytery. —Bishop Bowman, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, recently preached in the Methodist Mission Church, Rome, Italy, and had one of the Canons of St. Peter's among his audience. —Rev. A. H. Smith of the North China Presbyterian mission, writes that he is about to baptize one hundred or more persons, near his mission, and in another village more than three hundred are calling for Christian instruction. —The Examiner and Chronicle has been giving statistics of a Vermont town showing that the Christian population for a term of years has been longer lived than the non-Christian portion by an average of thirteen years. They ought to live enough better to make that difference. —The Protestant Churches of Ireland complain that they are constantly losing their best and brightest ministers. Presbyterian ministers go to Scotland and America, and Episcopal ministers go to England, receiving in both cases better appointments. —A missionary, after thirty years of service in India in building school houses, largely with his own hands, complains that on returning to America he finds churches in large cities which cost $200,000, and $500,000, and a Secretary of his own Foreign Board receiving $5000 a year, when the oldest mission in India "is really dying out for lack of men and means." —An ecclesiastical rebellion has broken out in Zulu-land in the Anglican Diocese, Bishop Macrone's. Dean Green of the Cathedral Church of Pietermaritzburg, in defiance of both bishop and Synod, introduced lights, vestments and incense in worship. The Dean refusing to comply with a further request of the bishop, the latter has disclaimed all responsibility for Mr. Green's conduct. —The Occident expresses itself as "utterly incredulous" with regard to a story told by Dr. Kalloch in one of his "preludes," to the effect that it was no uncommon thing for mothers in this city to send for him in great haste to perform the "ridiculous service" of sprinkling their dying infants, and that on one occasion, when he was a young preacher and hesitated to take part in so ridiculous a performance, a "good old mother in Israel" of the church said, "Do it, Isaac; do it. It won't hurt the baby, and it will do its father so much good." The Occident says: "We don't believe it," and intimates that Isaac lies. —Howard Malcom, D. D., LL. D., a distinguished Baptist clergyman and author, died in Philadelphia, March 25. He was born in Philadelphia, January 17, 1799, and after receiving a thorough collegiate education began to preach at the age of 19. He held pastorates in Hudson, N. Y., Boston, and Philadelphia; was President of the college at Georgetown, Ky., and of the University of Lewisburg, Pa. He traveled extensively in Europe, and as a deputy of the Baptist Missionary Union visited Hindostan, Burmah, Siam, China, and Africa. In the establishing of the American Sunday School Union and the American Tract Society he took a prominent part. Among his published works are a "Dictionary of the Bible," "Travels in Southeastern Asia," and several of a doctrinal character. —The following is the view of the Independent: The Richmond Religious Herald quotes the Independent as saying that it 'is really a pity that the Goverment did not, after the conquest of the rebellion, hang a few of these representatives of the Lost Cause, and it adds: "Four years after the close of the war, that is the way a religious (?) editor feels!" Well, yes, it is. One Judas once went and hanged himself; and it was a worthy end, in which we take satisfaction. If he had expressed himself as pleased with his treason, and gone into the sleeping-car or insurance business, and lived for fourteen years petted by Annas and Caiaphas and Gamaliel and all the Jewish people, it would not have pleased us. By your favor, brother Herald, 'that is the way a religious editor feels' eighteen hundred and forty-six years after the event."