Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1875 — RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

—A class of thirty-nine colored adults were recently confirmed by Bishop Gross, in St. Benedict’s Catholic Church, in Savannah, Ga. —As an illustrati on of the readiness of the colored people in the South to help, themselves the fact is mentioned of their contributing liberally for the erection of a Protestant Episcopal Church in New Orleans. —The last Presbytery of New York reported nine Presbyterian churches without pastors, some of whom were making efforts to secure a preacher. Measures were earnestly discussed in behalf of church extension in the hounds of the presbytery. —A. late decision in London has created a considerable sensation among the clergy of that city. The decision is to the effect that no minister of the Church of England can occupy a pulpit, administer or receive the communion, or join in any acts of worship in any Non-Conformist sanctuary without a clear violation of ecclesiastical law. —Rev. Mr. Trumbull reminds library eommjtttees, through the Sunday-School World , that a new generation of scholars comes on to draw books every five years, and that the old stories will be as fresh to them as if they had just appeared. They are not called upon, accordingly, to replenish their shelves with “ the latest thing out,” which also runsthe chance of heiqg the poorest. —The Bishop of Manchester, England, when distributing the prizes at the Birkenhead School, recently, spoke of the interest which Messrs. Moody and Sankey had stirred up in the Church of England for people of low degree. He expressed his approval of this, which he called “ Christian gravitation working downward to reach the lowest classes, so as to raise them upward to better Christian life.” —A new variety of the Mennonite, or Continental Quaker, sect is now gaining ground in Hungary to an extent that threatens embarrassment to the Administration. The so-called Nazarenes not only disown all clerical organization and refuse to take any oath or enter any military service, but dispute the lawfulness of all taxes that support State, church or army. All assessments made on them are levied under protest. They are said to be an offshoot of Calvinism, but have of late been largely recruited from the working Catholic population, so that their numbers, estimated a few years since at 6,000 only, are now officially stated at 30,000, and said to be really much larger. They decline to register themselves as of any church at all, thus flying directly in the face of the Hungarian system, whipji recognizes each known body of Christians as a separate State church, and even professes to make »State provision for it to some extent.