Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1875 — RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

—The Baptist ministers of Philadelphia have subscribed nearly $3,000 toward the endowment of the university at Lewisburg. —The Northern Presbyterian Church in Louisville now numbers seven congregations, with settled pastors, also six mission churches and a regular membership ot about 1,600 communicants. —The question of allowing women, in a New York Jewish synagogue, to sit with their families instead of being seated separately has been decided in the affirmative, to the great gratification of the good sisters. —The Seamen’s Friend Society reports that it has wholly or in part supported forty-eight chaplains, missionaries, tractdistributors and others the past year.' It has sent out 898 ship libraries, of which half were new. The expenditures were $65,058. —The General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church at its recent session declared that Sunday-schools “should be conducted so as to secure a thorough drill and training in the Scriptures and in the hymnology and standards of the church.” —The School Committee of Berklev, Mass., figure in thia way: “ Three thou; sand one hundred and fifty days were lost .last year through absence. Supposing each child in the school gets one new idea in the day, there is a loss to the town ofJ 3,150 ideas.” —Maj. G. W. Ingalls, a Baptist missionary- agent, reports that at the late general council of Indians at Okmulgee, where twenty-nine wild tribes were represented, the chief of one of the wild tribes said: “We want preachers who will have meetings and Sunday-schools for us; who can instruct and teach us the w-ords of the Great Spirit” —The Diocese of Ohio has fifty-one canonically resident Episcopal ministers and 5,961 communicants. It includes forty-eight counties, in twenty-seven of which there are seventy-six parishes, of which eighteen- are without ministerial services. In twenty-six counties there are no active parishes. This diocese embraces the northern half of the State.

—Those who adhere to what is known as “ Old-fashioned Methodism” have generally regarded a custom that has obtained to soine extent of arranging appointments in advance of the conferences lietween the preachers and the congregations as an innovation. Those who advocate the plan claim that it has important advantages: 1. This system relieves the Bishop of much labor. 2. It lesssens the chances of rebellion. 3. It secures more satisfactory appointments. 4. It is safe, becaiise the Bishop can annul any improper contract of this kind. 5. ( It gives all ministers an equal chance. 6. It stimulates both farties to make themselves desirable. 7. t has the authority of English Methodist usage.