Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
—The United States contributions to foreign missions do not exceed $2,000,000 annually. —An Episcopal church in Hartford has voted that none but baptized persons shall sing in the choir. —A New Jersey Methodist church are going to pay their church debt by raising one cent a day to each member. —Dr. Cummings of London will retire from the ministry, his physicians having ordered him to renounce all mental labor. —Dr. Dollinger says Dr. Newman was created cardinal because his writings are in English and not known at Rome! —Nearly 200 delegates representing Hebrew congregations have arrived in New York to attend the union of American Hebrew congregations. —James Eells, D. D., of Oakland, Cal., has been chosen professor of sacred rhetoric and pastoral theology in Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati. —The Sunday Magazine protests against the common custom "every Sunday and week day too, pastors begging, stewards begging, and young lady collectors begging." —The general Assembly of the Scotch Church discussed the subject of the abolition of fast days. One speaker said the last fast day in Glasgow was the "fastest" day he ever saw. —Dr. Moffat, than whom no one is better informed on whatever concerns that part of the world, says that "Mission work over all South Africa has been thrown back fifty years by the present war with the Zulus." —The Pope has decided to increase the number of foreign Cardinals in proportion to the number of Catholic subjects in foreign countries. If this policy is persevered in, the balance of power in that church will soon leave Italy. —At the recent meeting of the London Missionary Society, it was stated that in Madagascar, only ten years had passed since the idols were burnt; and there are now in the island 67,729 church members, 386 native pastors, 156 evangelists, and 3,468 native preachers. —Of 964,764 scholars in Sunday-schools connected with the London Union only 46,154 are church members, of whom 13,086 entered that relation the past year. The Union proposes to celebrate the centenary of Sunday-schools in June, 1880, and to erect a statue to Robert Raikes. —The revival services begun by Messrs. Moody and Sankey in Liverpool are still kept up with success. Meetings are conducted in different parts of the town, and are participated in by ministers of the different denominations, including Churchmen, Independents, Presbyterians, Baptists and Wesleyans. —The Wesleyan Conference of New Zealand reports in that distant land 150 churches, 116 preaching places, 203 local preachers, 149 class leaders, 3,190 members, 433 probationers, 474 catechists, and 139 Sunday-schools, with 11,147 scholars. The average attendance at public worship during the year was 29,540. —Dean Stanley officiated at a wedding in a Nonconformist chapel, and has done other unchurchly acts, but the London Christian Signal says he is not called to order because "he is rather too big a fish for the defenders of the Act of Uniformity to hope ever to land." Only the smaller ones are orthodox by compulsion. —The Brethren at Work says, "That Unitarian Church in Newburyport, Mass., which recently celebrated the Lord's Supper 'without material bread or wine,' but regarded it 'as a purely spiritual rite' was no less inconsistent in what it did than those who undertake to obey the thirteenth of John by feeling a little humility in the heart." —The Ragged School Union of London expends about $130,000 a year in efforts to elevate the lowest and poorest classes. It has 30,500 children in Sunday-schools, 5,489 in day schools, and 9,287 in night schools. It maintains 75 ragged churches, 82 lending libraries, and 75 penny banks, besides superintending mothers' meetings, men's clubs, Bands of Hope, and a variety of children's meetings.