Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
—Dr. Talmage will soon return home. —The corner-stone of an Episcopal Mission College has been laid near Shanghai. —The first church erected in Spain in connection with the Church of England, has just been opened. —Bishop Peck has pledged his whole estate for Syracuse University, and insured his life to endow a professorship in it. —The Baptist Theological Seminary at Ramapataru, India, has graduated a class of nineteen, seven of whom are women. —The Bishop of Manchester, in a recent sermon, condemned "the tendency in the present day towards emotionalism in religion." —Bishop Haven wrote from San Francisco, July 24, "Shivering with cold. We leave tonight for Napa and the geysers to get warm." —Only one pastor in San Francisco did not preach on the subject of the assassination of Dr. Kalloch, last Sunday, and that one prayed for the safety of the city. —The recent Chautauqua Assembly had for its lecturers Joseph Cook, Bishop Simpson, Prof. Churchill, and Drs. Daniel Curry, H. W. Warren, A. A. Hodge, and J. M. Buckley. —It is asserted that the colleges and universities in Scotland "are very hotbeds of Rationalism, and that the orthodoxy of the church is thus being tainted in its springs." The Free Church is much troubled over this. —The Christian at Work says it knew of "three professed Christians, one of them a minister, who 'summered' at a watering place; one brought a copy of Sir Thomas Browne; another Shakspeare; the third a corkscrew! neither one a Bible." —A correspondent of the Evangel labors to prove that "Christ is the tree of life." We have to read the record of God's way of grace all anew to believe that he guarded with a flaming sword the way to Christ, lest the sinner should have access to him! —Dr. Cullis and others, of Boston, have purchased the old buildings of the Randolph Macon College, in Mecklenburgh, Va., to establish an educational institution for the colored people, on the "faith principle," as adopted by Mr. Muller of Bristol, England. —The revision of the Bible is drawing to a close. The English New Testament revisers have held their ninety-first meeting, and are engaged in the second and final revision, taking under their consideration the suggestions of the American Committee. The English Old Testament revisers have held fifty-eight sessions, and have continued the second revision through the Psalms of David. —Although fraternal relations have been "formally established" between the North and South Methodist Churches, the South did not appoint fraternal commissioners to the Northern General Conference to be held next year. The Independent says: "That there is no real fraternity between the churches is plain to everybody. There was too much haste and too much gush," in the formal action. —Said Dr. John Brown of Haddington, to his theological students: "Young gentlemen, you need three things to make you good ministers: learning, grace, and common sense. As to the learning, I will try to set you in the way of it; as for grace, you must always pray for it; but if you have not brought the common sense with you, you may go about your business." Let students make a note of it. —The Nashville Advocate is alarmed at the aggressiveness of those Christians who advocate the observance of the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath instead of the first, on the ground that the seventh was the day originally appointed, and that there is no record of any divine injunction to change the day: "It shows a weak mind, if not a perverse spirit, to rest on Saturday and work on Sunday, when all Christendom is at rest. It seems captious to be asking for a divine injunction to sanction the change of day"! —The Louisville Southern Methodist commends the statement of the Atlantic Monthly, that "one of the special dangers and defects of preaching in this country is connected with the popular liking for popular oratory in the pulpit. The common American idea of pulpit eloquence is low and sensational. It means chiefly a rapid and emphatic utterance of sonorous sentences, with something extreme, paradoxical and violent in the thought presented, though not much thought is required. People enjoy with a kind of voluptuousness the temporary stimulus."