Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
—Reports of missionary work in China are more than usually encouraging. —It is said that Duluth has eleven churches not half of which is now used. —Bishop Whittingham, Episcopal, of Maryland, died recently, aged 74 years. —Tremont Temple, Boston, is to be rebuilt with a larger seating capacity than it had before. —The Japanese Government has given permission to a native publisher to print an edition of Genesis in Chinese. —The Mormons are offering determined resistance to the officers in their efforts to enforce the laws against polygamy. —Dr. Loverick Pierce, “the oldest Methodist minister,” died at his residence in Sparta, Georgia, Nov. 10, aged 95 years. —The Methodists of Philadelphia, led by Mrs. Bishop Simpson, are preparing to hold a great fair to raise funds to found a Methodist orphanage in that city. —Dr. A. J. Frost, pastor of the Baptist church of San Jose, was most active in the indorsement reception of Dr. Kalloch, which so alienated his flock that he resigned. —The Pope is progressive enough to realize the power of the press. He is to establish a paper as an organ in Rome, the first number to appear with the beginning of the new year. —Henry Morgan, a Boston preacher, is on a crusade against church gambling. He not only denounces it, but has given notice that he shall prosecute the first violation of the law of the State which takes place in a church fair. —The Chinese are doing missionary work among their Mohameda n subjects in the Province of Yunan. An imperial decree offers freedom from taxation to every one who will renounce his religion and follow the teachings of Confucius. —The Richmond Religious Herald says, “It is better that churches should grow steadily under the ministry of their pastors, than that they should increase by the spasmodic efforts of revivalists, with the reaction almost certainly consequent on them.” —Love of novelty may lead to things unseemly. Instance the following item: “Rev. J. K. Falconer, a popular preacher in London, is an expert bicyclist, and on Sunday mornings rolls to church on one of those vehicles, followed by a crowd of friends similarly mounted.” —The Sandwich Island Friend contains an account of the organization of the first Chinese church on the Hawaiian Islands. The Rev. M. Kuxa, pastor of the Kaumakapili church, having led in prayer, the hymn, “Nearer My God to Thee,” was sung in Chinese and English. —The Christian Herald of London says that Moses Montefiore is now seeking to secure the re-establishment of the Jews in Jerusalem, and is taking steps to restore the city. He has given orders to cultivate all the land in front of the Judah Torah houses, and has caused a large cistern to be constructed which will secure a full supply of water. Terraces are to be rebuilt as they probably were in the days of Solomon. —Buddhist pilgrims in India travel sometimes hundreds of miles by measuring their length on the ground, marking the place to which their head comes, then bringing their feet to that point, measuring their length again, and so on. Others roll the entire distance, and others still walk on their knees. There are men in India who claim not to have risen from their knees for twelve years.” Here apply the common excuse: “It will do just as well, if you are only sincere.” —A well-known clergyman who preached in a village in Massachusetts, found his hearers diminishing day by day, and consulted an old Scotch sea-faring man, who could not boast of much religion, but who stuck by the ship, why the people would not come to church. ‘I canna exactly tell, mon ; ye preach on Spring and Autumn most eloquent discourses, and ye improve the great accident and loss of life on the sound: ye might try them with something out of the Bible, and, being fresh, maybe it would hold them another Sunday or two.” —Dr. Lorimer, who read another man’s sermon in Chicago, for which he was greatly praised until some one recognized it, pleads that in reading he becomes so “saturated” with the ideas of another, having also a retentive memory, that he gives utterance to their words unconsciously! The papers label it “unconscious borrowing,” which will no doubt become as popular to the pulpit as the plea of “moral insanity” in the courts. And all of which serves to lower the sacred office in the estimation of the world, especially that part which abhors deception.