Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1875 — RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

—The new Freshman class at Harvard College numbers 270, and is the largest ever entered. • t —Mount IJolyoke Seminary has supplied 115 wives .for missionaries, who have gone as teachers to all parts of the world. —The Methodists, according to an official statement of the Kentucky Conference, have increased 11,000 in the State since 1866. —The number of church buildings owned bjr the Southern Presbyterian Church is 1,797; of this number 520 are vacant. The number of preachers without charges is 208; the whole number of preachers is 1,084.' —The General Missionary Committee of the Methodist Episcopal Church is to meet in New York Nov. 10. The meeting of the General Committee of the Church Extension Society of the same denomination is to be held in Philadelphia, Nov. 18. —The Hebrew Leader laments that so many of the people of Israel are sO negligent of their religious duties, and that not a few men are more ready to pay for fine temples and music, and to own good pews, than to frequent the worship that makes these things useful. —lt is now probable that the place for the meeting of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church next May will be changed from St. Louis to Baltimore. The financial embarrassment of the West and the nearness of Baltimore to the Centennial Exhibition are the reasons given for the change.— N. Y. Tribune.

—The Westminster Presbytery, Pennsylvania, has published a series of resolutions which it passed at a recent session upon the spreading neglect of the Sabbath. In particular, it specified the running of Sunday excursion trains especially for the purpose of conveying persons to religious meetings, and the proposed opening of the Centennial Exhibition on Sunday. —The Catholics of Victoria, Australia, have sent a petition to the Parliament of the province protesting against their taxation for the support of free schools. They desire to obtain a State grant for their schools. An education Teague is being formed by the Protestant bodies to oppose the revival of the denominational system. —The long-contested church case, growing out of the suspension, in 1868, of George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, by the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, for singing hymns and communing with other churches, was finally settled by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, recently in session at Pittsburgh, in favor of the Stuart party. —The Unitarian Church of Keokuk, lowa, announces a series of sermons on science to be delivered on alternate Sunday evenings. The topics include, among others, the Darwinian theory and spectrum analysis. The design of the lecture, it is stated, will be to show that even if modem scientific theories are accepted “ the foundations of true religion remain unshaken.” —The German Empire contains 60,000 schools, with 6,000,000 scholars. To every 1,000 inhabitants there are 150 scholars. There are 330 gymnasiums, 14 progymnasiums and 484 real schools and grammar schools. The normal schools contain 177,370 scholars. There are twenty universities with 15,557 students, Berlin, Leipsic and Munich having each more than 1,000. The polytechnic schools have 360 teachers and 4,428 students. —Mr. Long is illustrating in Baltimore a new mode of preaching. His object is to impress inspired truth upon the intellect and the heart through the medium of the eye and the ear at the same time. He has large paintings, said to be beautiful and correct, which represent the subject he proposes to present to the assemblv. These are placed above the pulpit and in' 1 rear of the preacher, and the different scenes and circumstances in the development of liis subject are as quickly and easily unfolded to view as the turning of the leaves of a manuscript. Lecturers well know the great advantage that maps and charts afford when they can be used in illustration of their subjects. Mr. Long hopes his new method will prove of great advantage to preachers and hearers. His efforts are exciting much interest and he has large congregations.— Chicago Tribune.