The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1880-03-10

The price of paper IS forcing many
newspaper changes. Several, as already noted
have met the rise in paper by an increase of
their subscription prices. The Christian Stand
ard takes a more sensible way. It appears, this
week, reduced in size. 1t also adopts the daily
paper style of FASTING and cutting. 1t presents
very neat appearance.
During the past year, in the North
west Department of the American Sunday School
Union there have been organized 40S new Sun
day Schools, with $50 teachers and 1850
scholars; 1856 schools visited and aided, hav-
ing 5,756 teachers and 52,045 scholars; 3,O47
Bibles and Testaments distributed; 6 145 fami
lies visited, and lie, 125 miles travelled; 1000
sermons and addresses delivered.
Foreign.
STARVATION IN PERsIA.-The well
come tidings come to us from the highest au-
thority, that the danger of starvation is passed"
in Ireland From Persia, on the contrary, the
tidings are more terrible with every mail II
needs no appeal to enforce the following ex.
tracts from private letter from one of the mis-
sionaries in that wasted and desolated region to
the President of the Ladies Board of Missions
of the Presbyterian Church:
Ny soul is sick with the wretchedness am
compelled to daily and with the heart sicken-
ing accounts which daily come to me- X X
Parents have sold their children to get bread
One grandmother took poison when she found it
impossible to obtain food for herself and grand
child, that he might live. One father unable
to see his children dying before his eyes, pro-
cured one more meal, thoroughly poisoning it.
They all sat down together, before they all left
together for that bourne from which no travel.
Ter returns A woman from one of my Mus
sulman villages brought two little girls, and
throwing them at my feet exclaimed: Take
them for your own, if you will They are starry
ing, as are my other children x x These
poor people are anxious for work, and | have
had large company of men, women and chill
dren digging root on the mountain of SER, which
is very good for fuel; but now even this slender
resource has failed, for the snow has come The
poor have parted with cattle and household
goods, to the bed on which they sleep Many
are almost naked, and multitudes barefooted are
facing the cold, pitiless storms, begging for
bread. N. Y Observer.
In a paper read at the Allahabad
Conference in 1872, Mr.. Shering, of Benares,
showed that if the rate of increase in the nomi-
nal Christian population which obtained during
the decade 1911 were kept up, and only kept
up during future decades majority of the pop-
ulation of India would be nominally Christian
before the year 1000. That rate of increase has
not only been maintained, but exceeded during
the decade now in progress.
EGYPTIAN DIsCIpLINE.-Dr LANSING
of the United Presbyterian Mission writes re.
Gently to one of the native deacons at Stuff, some
sixty miles south of Cairo, who had suspended
ten OF his members for such crimes as bad dis
positions, vanity, stinginess, and not allowing
their wives to go to weekly prayer meeting. !"
we did not learn the effects of the discipline.
"A law worthy of imitation has been
enacted in some of the German States, forbidding
any lad under sixteen years of age to smoke, the
penalty being fine or imprisonment
Marshall MacMahons Ministry had
in it FIVE Protestants and only four Catholics.
y Under President Grevy the same proportion of
catholics was continued, and several of the lit
erary and leading minds in France have lately
expressed themselves most favorably to Protes-
tantism