RELIGIOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 691, 29 May 1885, Page 6

RELIGIOUS.

The organisation of Young Men’s Christian Associations in institutions of learning has been actively pushed in the last few years. There now are associations in about two hundred colleges, academies and normal schools in the United States. The mission station of the C.M.S., at Frere Town, East Africa, has just received another lot of liberated slaves (240), captured by British cruisers. . . The famous ex-Jesuit, Curci, is now living at Florence. Having given up his fight against the temporal power of the Pope, he is engaged on a work on the subject of socialism. Some Hebrew converts, six males and one female, Were recently baptized at St. Paul s Church, Haggerstone, London, by the Rev. M. Rosenthal, who has baptised some one hundred and forty during the last five years. The trustees of the British Museum lately applied to the Lords of the Treasury for authority to open the Natural History Department on Sunday. The desired sanction has been refused on the ground of the vote of the House of Commons in ISB2, adverse to the opening of ' national galleries and museums on that day. Several months ago, the Russian Government interfered to suppress the mission work that for seven or eight years had been carried on in the Empire by the Religious Tract Society of London. It is now stated, however, that all the tracts confiscated have been returned by the Government, and permission has been given to resume the work of gratuitous distribution of religious readLooking out upon the mission field of Northern Persia we see forty missionaries occupying the chief centres, and about a hundred out-stations clustered _ around. There are nearly two hundred native assistants aiding to man these centres and outstations, and nearly two thousand communicants located at these points, so as to form an excellent leaven for the whole mass ; and there is an open door to the Gospel in every house in all this great field. The foreign mission work in Germany has suffered a severe loss in the death of Theodore Harms of Hermannsburg, in Hanover, the leading spirit of the Hermannsburg Missionary Society, that has labored with so great success in South Africa, East India and China. His brother, Louis Harms, founded this society with no capital but fervent faith, and found, this an excellent investment. Since his death, his now deceased brother, Theodore, has proved himself a worthy successor.