Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1876 — RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

—An effort is being made to. form a Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society in every church belonging to the United Presbyterian body in this country. ’ “ —The Sabbath-School Union of Ohio has issued a request to its friends for aid to enable it to be represented in the Sab-bath-School Department of the Centennial Exhibition. —Missionaries in Egypt say that the outlook is most encouraging. Calls for missionary labor come from all directions. Nine persons have recently been licensed to preach, and the schools contain 1,170 scholars. —The Flower Mission of London sends between 3,000 and 4,000 bouquets weekly to the hospitals, workhouses and sick poor at home. The flowers are placed in little paper bouquet-holders, upon each of which is a text of Scripture. —(The Presbytery of Oregon includes thirty ministers and nineteen churches. Its field extends over Oregon, Washington Territory and Idaho. The presbytery recently resolved to appeal to the General Assembly for the establishment of a synod with three or more presbyteries. —A missionary in Madagascar says the demand of the Malagasy in and near the capital for education is very great, and teachers cannot be trained fast enough. There is also a great demand for the Bible. Most of the tribes surrounding the central province are, however, rank heathens, filthy, cruel and almosj constantly warring with one another. —Prof. Fawcett maintains that different students should be allowed to choose their own intellectual discipline, so as to be in keeping with their own aspirations and interests, and cites cases in which the study of political economy takes hold of young men and develops their mental powers after classics and mathematics have completely failed to awaken them. —The Commissioner of Education has issued a circular concerning the representation of the higher education at the Centennial Exhibition. It is proposed to give (1) a summary of the history of each institution and of its several grants and endowments; (2) full statistics of the professors and students; (3) an account and estimate of the buildings owned by each; (4) a separate account of the chemical laboratories and of the observatories for astronomical, magnetic, or meteorological observations; (5) statistics of college societies; (6) statistics of grants and endowments. In this way a most important body of statistics will be gathered and made accessible to the student of political or social science.