The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-02-18
SCHOOL AND CHURCH.

"A Baptist church has been organized
at Santa Fe, New Mexico, being the third
in that Territory.
There are in the Canadian Provinces
ninety-one Congregational churches, with
fifty-one pastors and $685. members.
Their church property is valued at $500,
600.
The venerable w. w. Corcoran, who
never wearies in good works, has given
to Columbian University valuable site
in Washington for its college, law school
and scientific school.
The Roman Catholics are making
determined efforts to convert the people
of Central Africa to their faith. Already
more than fifty missionaries have gone
from Algeria to Equatorial Africa, and
the Pope is urging greater efforts.
Harriet Beecher Stowe son Charles
was ordained and installed pastor of the
Saco (Me.) Congregational Church, the
other day, though four of the five dea-
cons and thirty three members protested
that he lacked piety and was theological
ly loose.
The total receipts of the American
Board for the last financial year were
$691, PAS. Of this sum $257, 907 was
expended for the four missions in Turkey;
S103,7S for three missions in India;
S89,642 for the two missions in China;
$46,624 for Japan and SOL, 276 for three
missions in Africa
The South Congregational Sunday
School of New Britain, Conn, pays its
Superintendent regular salary, and he
devotes his whole time to the interests
of the school, visiting families, looking
after absent scholars, etc. 1t is the
largest Protestant Sunday School in the
State, and numbers about 1000 mem
berS.
The ordinary country school-house is
as ill-adapted for the use to which it is
put to as anything could be. The Super
intendent of Public Instruction in Wis
consin has done good service for his
State in preparing and sending out cir
cular containing designs for buildings,
of various prices, with practical sugges-
tions as to ventilation, lighting, etc.
AS the result of his last years work
in China, DR.. Nevins counts one hundred
villages which have become centres of
Christian work, and in these are thirty
churches. His parish extends over some
800 miles of country, in which he is the
only evangelist employed by the board,
although the number of conversions have
increased twenty per cent. in the last few
years. There are still whole provinces,
containing an average of about 10000
inhabitants unentered by missionaries.
During 1881 the missionaries of the
American Sunday-School Union in the
Northwest established 547 new Sunday
schools, mostly in pioneer settlements,
aided ], 04i old schools, 591 in all, hav-
ing 1886 teachers and 1854 scholars.
They placed in these settlements pure
and healthful literature. valued at SIS, POI;
distributed JAP Bibles and Testaments,
visited 9,1SS families, conducted 2,1S5
religious services, organized and attended
112 conventions for the instruction of
teachers, and travelled 119, IA miles.
The final abandonment by DR.. Tai
madge, of Brooklyn, of the so-called
free-pew system, and the substitution of
the plan of selling the choice of seats at
fixed rental at auction, first introduced,
we believe, by Plymouth Church, must
be regarded as significant testimony
against the experiment of maintaining
free seat church by the contributions of
attendants. The method has long since
been abandoned by the Roman Catholic
metropolitan churches, whose pew doors
open only to renters by year or the day;
it is generally going out of vogue with
the Methodists. Christian Union.