Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1875 — RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

—A Western minister declines the title of D. D. because he considers it to be inconsistent with the command in the New Testament, “Be ye not called Rabbi” (Matt, xxiii., 8). —The Italian Giunta Liguidatrice has sold to the American Methodists in Rome a piece of ground adjacent to the Church of the Crociferi for 60,000 lire. A place of worship will be erected on this lot by the Methodists. —A writer in the Jewish Messenger urges the establishment of an effective organization among American Israelites as the only means of making the Jewish Church take rank with others and show that its creed and practice are still entitled to the respect of mankind. In this organization, he argues, great latitude ought to be permitted to religious opinions and conformity exacted as to essential matters only. —To educate children—one’s own children—is a troublesome, hard task, rarely succeeding to our wishes, therefore one connected with sorrow and care. - All parents without exception know this all over the earth; they have experienced it, survived it. But the task does not last forever; it passes away and does not claim everything. With thanks toward God we see our children grown up, and we rejoice that there is no more need of education. Not much of the work, perhaps not the whole of it, is to be begun again.—Exchange. —The minutes of the General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Chhrch for 1875 show great prosperity. The number of persons added to the churches in 1874 on a profession of faith was 7,846; the total number of members is 107,334. At the close of the late war it was about 80,000. The largest increase for the year past was in the Synod of Virginia. The largest Sunday-school, that of the First Church in Nashville, Tenn., numbers 715 scholars.

—What is heeded in our public schools is more oral teaching and less hearing of recitations. Geography should be taught by lectures, by books of travel, by illustrations, and there is no studies except those of grammar and mathematics which could not be made highly attractive to youthful minds. Children should be macle to employ other things beside mere memory; and first of all their imaginations should be utilized by the teacher if he aims at making scholars of his pupils. Facts are good enough in their way, but boys cannot live upon facts alone. Even they need sauce to render them palatable.—Philadelphia Inquirer. —The Nashville Christian Advocate of a recent date consolidates the conference returns of the Methodist Church for 1874. The following are the aggregates: Traveling preachers 3,224 Superannuated jireachers 261 Local preachers. 5 356 White members 686,764 Oolored members ... 2J562 Indian members 4 697 Total preachers and membership 712’,765 Increase over 1874 37,375 Infants baptized 21,909 Adults baptized 40/358 Sunday-schools 7,204 Sunday-school teachers...... 48,823 Sunday-school scholars 328,634 Collections for conference claimants. .$64,294 20 Collections for missionslol,6s3 46 The number of conferences is thirty seven, of which North Georgia is the largest—having a membership of 51,683. North Carolina is next, withamembershin of 50,426.