Three missionaries have been recently murdered: Rev. John Houghton and wife of Golbanti, East Africa, and Bishop Hannington.
Not long ago, a Mr. Green, president of a temperance society of England, destroyed the contents of his wine-cellar, valued at three thousand dollars.
We are glad to hear that the government of Japan has forbidden the lecturing against Christianity, by “Yaso Taiji,” or Jesus opposers, believing it to be damaging to the country.
We hear of a church in Iowa which is very new, and not yet furnished. Just now the Sunday-school scholars are seated on rough boards resting on boxes. But this is a good beginning.
A little over twenty-five years ago Sunday-schools were introduced into Sweden. Now there are two hundred thousand Sunday-school scholars and twenty thousand teachers in the country!
There is a saloon in the city of Cincinnati, called “The Spider Web,” with a picture on the sign of a spider in his web. How appropriate this is, when the business of the saloon is to entangle men’s souls and bodies!
Before the war, a slave was beaten terribly by his master for being “religious,” and the cruel man afterward exclaimed: “There! what will your religion do for you now?” “It will help me to forgive you, Massa,” was the reply.
A minister of Kansas said that he once took into the church, at one communion service, a Chinaman, a colored man, two Germans, an Irishman and some Americans. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.”
The Societies of Christian Endeavor, among the young people, are growing, all over the country. There is a thriving one in a little church in New York State, of which we know. They recently gave a “lawn party” and raised money to fresco, paint, carpet, and partially seat the chapel of the church. They also have an “envelope fund,” and each member brings weekly some regular amount. Half of this goes to regular church expenses, and half to anything for which they vote to use it.
In Southern Ohio last spring there was a little brick church, the wall-paper of which had peeled off. The walls were dirty, the matting in the aisles was dirty, the seats were ugly, and the chandeliers hung from the ceiling by ropes. The people were discouraged, and thought nothing could be done. But some money was raised, and the walls were re-papered, the seats oiled and grained, a new carpet put down, the chandeliers hung nicely, and now such a pretty little church as it is! If you could have seen it the Sunday before it was fixed, and the Sunday after, you would have thought it a wonderful transformation, indeed.