Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1876 — RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

—The next meeting of the Ohio State teachers will be held at Put-in Bay, June 27, 1876, and will continue in session three days. . —Kansas sets a beautiful example to aome of our older States. She has expended $8 ,980.085 in school-houses and has a school fund of over f 1,000,000 and constantly increasing. —The Centennial Commissioners have s appointed Mr. J. Middleton, of the Methodist Episcopal Book Concern, New York, to take charge of the Sabbaih-school department of the Exhibition —According to the Dispatch there arc in Richmond, Va., 53 churches, with 26.958 communicants (an increase of 2,130 during 1875}, and 13,850 Sunday-school scholars. The Dispatch estimates that one person out of every two and a half of the population of Richmond is a member of some church. —The ladies of the Baptist mission to the Chinese inSPoftlana, Ore., report as the result of successful worU the conversion of fourteen Chinese youths, one of whom is preparing for the'ministry, an increasing moral and civilizing in fluence over forty other pupils in their schools, the majority of whom have renounced idol worship, and a strong impression on the Chinese population of .the superiority of Christian customs. —iome remarkable facts respecting th e spread of Christianity in India have lately been brought out by the census, which was prepared with great labor and care by the Indian Government. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand "Protestant native Christians are reported, showing that during the past ten years there has been an increase of 61 per cent of the Christian population, while the natural increase of the Hindu population has been but 5 per cent. —The eighth annual meeting of the Woman’s Board of Missions of the Congregational Churches was held in Boston a short time ago. The report showed the total receipts for the year 1875 to be $72,000. Three branch societies have been added dunng the year to the nine already in existence. The society has now twelve branches and 800 auxiliaries. There are now fifty-nine missionaries supported by the society, of whom five were sent out during 1875, besides fifty Bible women and native teachers. X— Under the old Constitution of Alabama one-fifth of the revenues of the State were appropriated to the publicschool fund. But owing to the delay of the Auditor of the State in issuing his warrants for the collection of the school tax until after the adoption of the new Constitution there are only $75,713.48 in available funds for the support of the public schools in that State during the present year. Unless further means are provided by the General Assembly most of the schools will have to close. —The full title of the proposed new National Church of Mexico is “ The Mexican Branch of the Catholic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, Militant upon Earth.” This is abridged for popular use, thus: “Church of Jesus in Mexico." It had by the last accounts from the Rev. Dr. Riley fifty -seven congregations, nine day schools, two Christian periodicals and one orphanage. A commission of seven American Protestant Episcopal Bishops has now the general superintendence of this movement until a Mexican Bishop is appointed —Catholicism in? Minnesota, which, in the boyhood of its recently-consecrated Bishop, Ireland, consisted of a few' missionaries, ministering in log cabins to the pioneer settlers and the Indians, has grown to a hierarchy’ of three Bishops, one mitred Abbot and an army of seular and religious clergy, a monastery', a Jesuit and Benedictine college, a score of convents, with their schools and charitable institutions; magnificent church edifices dotted all over the State, with parochial schools attached, and a Catholic population of 150.000.