SUNDRIES.
Iowa Lands, Louisiana Churches, Theological Books.
Of the 6,040 acres given to the American Missionary Association by the Rev. Charles Avery, 1,500 yet remain to be sold. Any person who would like to make a good investment in land, can do so by applying to Secretary Strieby at New York. I found that the railway company were pushing their track along from Algona to Shelby on the Sioux City & St. Paul Railroad. So the branch from Huntington on the same road has been built to Sioux Falls in Dakota.
Since the meeting of the Louisiana Conference in April, Rev. Daniel Clay, and his people at Terrebonne, have enjoyed a revival of religion which has added thirty-four to the membership. This sable brother has been the instrumentality in bringing several of the other pastors of that region into the ministry. Rev. W. S. Alexander, pastor of the Central Church in New Orleans, and President of the Straight University, somehow finds time once a year to visit these brethren and these churches which he broods, in the Louisiana Conference. He says they are Congregationalists, ex-animo. This Christian worker, who was turned back from his mission to the nominally Christian lands in South Europe, finds an admirable substitute in the extreme South of our country.
Those young men who in our Southern institutions are coming on to be Congregational divines, ought to have access to the theological literature of the fathers. The common text-book used by their instructors is Pond’s Theology, issued by our Congregational Publishing Society. They ought to have in their libraries, as reference books, the works of Robinson, and Edwards, and Hopkins, and Bellamy, and Park on the Atonement. Now, these books are on the shelves of the C. P. Society, and can be had cheap. The Society has not in hand the means to make the appropriation, but are there not some of the stanch friends of the old Congregational Board and its stanch theology, who will be glad to put those works within the reach of these young theologians of the South? That would be a handsome thing to do, and grand results may follow in solidifying the views of those coming preachers. There are five of these institutions which are teaching theology, and as many libraries that await such an accession of the wisdom of the fathers.—Pilgrim, in Congregationalist.