Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1875 — RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

—The Warren Avenue Baptist Church, of Boston, has stricken out from its declaration of faith the clause which makes immersion a prerequisite to communion. —William Cullen Bryant, Whitelaw Reid and George William Curtis will again be the judges at the intercollegiate oratorical contest which takes place at the New York Academy of Music Jan. 4. —ln the city of New York there are thirty places of worship for the German population, numbering 250,000. Of these the Episcopal Church has but two. Bishop Potter, at the annual convention just held, urged the enlargement of church work in the German districts. —At the recent session of the North Philadelphia Baptist Association a resolution was unanimously passed, in favor of unsectarian common schools. The resolution condemned all legislative appropriations for sectarian objects. The present membership of the association is 5,247 persons, an increase during the year of 178. —The Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Porter, the predecessor of the Rev. Dr. Putnam, who is senior pastor of First Church, Roxbury, Mass., was a graduate of Harvard in 1777 q and if Dr. Putnam Ijves, as his improved health promises, a few years longer, that church wiR present the rare instance of two successive pastors with a century In their combined years of mirqstry.

—The denomination of “ Christians” recently held a Missionary Convention at Louisville, Ky., and resolved upon busing a centennial fund of $500,000. This denomination appears to have originated about the beginning of this century, and to have started almost simultaneously in. movements in Vermont, North Carolina and Kentucky, which aimed to leave bohind the old sects and priesthoods and to revive primitive Christianity as it is presented in the Bible, with no other name than that of Christian. They administer baptism by immersion, they are full of the revival spirit, and they have made earnest efforts to have good schools and colleges. They bold views of J esus Christ much like the ancient Arian views, and regard Him as existing before His coming into this world, yet as subordinate to the Father, while they do not insist upon any creed but the Scriptures. Antioch College was begun by them and afterward passed into the hands of the Unitarians, anti some of its early supports ers~gave their efforts to another college further west. The Christians have several religious papers and also a review.—A(, F Evening Pont. —The Centennial air— u Old Hundred.”