These meetings, held every evening and on Sunday afternoons, have been of the most earnest character and have given every promise of vast practical results. REVIVAL AMONG THE CANALBOATMEN.- Every Winter | city and harbor. many hundred canalboats are laid up for the season in the huge basin north of the Erie Railway Depot, in Jersey City. The officers and men, with their families, form a most inter esting community, and move about in a world of their own, restricted, it is true, but yet a distinct and novel one. As the denizens of this floating village seldom leave their homes during the season, all manner of amusements and entertainments are improvised with the ready knack for which sailors are famous. Concerts, receptions, balls, theatrical divertisements, formal interchange of visitations, and countless other features of social life, occupy the attention of the colonists during the long days and nights. During the past Winter there were over three hundred boats in the basin, and the usual rounds of pleasure were supplemented in February by a series of religious services, inaugurated by Captain Lewis S. Nichols, who ran one of the largest boats in the fleet. At first he held his meetings in the cabin of his own boat. Soon the sounds of sacred song were heard PRESIDENT MCCоSH is opposed to the proposition for a national university; so are Chancellor Crosby of the University of New York City, President Barnard of Columbia College, and President Elliot of Harvard University. Pius IX., during his long reign, created 29 archbishoprics, 130 bishoprics, and 43 vicarates apostolic. THE Duke of Portland, who has given such magnificent donations for the relief of the sick and wounded in the East, is a hypochondriac of 70, with an income of $750,000 a year. He suffers from a disfiguring malady, and lives in seclusion, whether at Welbic Abbey, his seat in Nottinghamshire, the most famous of these places known as "the dukeries," or London. In the latter he inhabited a vast, gloomy mansion in Cavendish Square. The Duke cannot bear to be seen, and has erected at the back of his house an REVIVAL SERVICES AMONG THE CANALBOATMEN AT CALIFORNIA BASIN JERSEY CITY.-EXTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL-BARGE WASHINGTON." nightly in the fleet, and (before long the meetings were so well attended that larger quarters became necessary. Then the hold of an empty canalboat was fitted up roughly, and Captain Nichols preached nightly to from forty to sixty persons. In the course of two or three weeks the people of Jersey City heard of the revival, and the meetings were swelled beyond the capacity of the boat At this juncture the proprietor of the Washington, a large ice-barge, offered the use of that craft to Captain Nichols, and the latter, aided by his congregation, fitted her up with chairs and rough seats sufficient to accommodate 300 persons. In her the revival was continued until the breaking-up of the fleet for the Spring and Summer traffic. Captain Nichols calls his enterprise the New York Harbor Boatmen and Sailors' Gospel Mission, and he will probably appeal to the Christian public to make it a permanent institution. He says: If $600 are raised by subscription, he will give up his own boat for a chapel, and use the money to make her comfortable. She will then be stationed in the Long Dock basin, where she will be accessible to all the canal boatmen and sailors in the immense screen of iron and glass, which completely prevents the neighbors from gratifying their curiosity. It is said that after dark he may be seen pacing the garden in the midst of Cavendish Square. Neither he nor his brothers, all dead, eve married. One of them, Lord George Bentinck, who was cut off in his prime, was the hope of the Tory party, and the first "turfite" in England. United States was organized about twenty years ago. Now THE first congregation of Scandinavian Lutherans in the there are 968 congregations, with 332 ministers and 115,000 communicants. Very fair progress. THE REV. P. B. Morgan, of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, has formally announced his withdrawal from fellowship in that Church on account of what he called its Roman Catholic tendencies, and said that he intended to unite with the Reformed Episcopal Church. St. John's Church is the most flourishing Episcopal church in Cincinnati. Mr. Morgan will take charge of a Reformed Episcopal Church in Chicago. REVIVAL SERVICES AMONG THE CANAL BOATMEN AT CALIFORNIA BASIN, JERSEY CITY.-CAPTAIN NICHOLS PREACHING IN THE CHAPEL ON THE BARGE WASHINGTON." A CURIOUS relic of fire-worship exists in Scotland. It is called the festival of "The Clavie," and takes place each twelfth of January at Burghead, a fishing village on the Scotch coast. A tar-barrel is burnt, and as it falls into pieces the fisher-wives rush in and endeavor to get a lighted bit of firewood. With this the fire on the cottage hearth is at once kindled. It is considered lucky to keep this flame all the rest of the year. PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS says that the common assertion that ". the sons of Christian fathers are more generally worse than others" is disproved by statistics. He gives the following fact: In a certain New England town of some thousands of people, the records of the Christian families were once examined thoroughly to test this tion. The proportion of the children of such families who became religious men and women, as related to those who did not, was more than five to one. ques THE trustees of the Church of the Pilgrims, Rev. Dr. Storrs, have purchased several lots on Clinton Street, between Second and Third Places, South Brooklyn, on which they are about to build a mission chapel, the foundation being already in progress. The building will be of brick, 75 by 40 feet, and finished by the first of August. HIGH ritual increases in London. Thirty-nine Churches now celebrate daily communion, against eleven last year. THE venerable Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton College, though in his 81st year, meets his classes regularly four times a week. THE REV. Mr. Seeley, an Episcopal clergyman of Plainville, Conn., lately conducted revival meetings at the Methodist Church in Windsor Locks, FEW churches can show such a record of prosperity as Dr. Crosby's, on Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street, New York. In reviewing the fifteen years of its history, which closed March 13th, Dr. Crosby stated that there are now in it 1,300 communicants. This makes it the seventh as to numerical strength of the 5,000 under the jurisdiction of the General Assembly. The churches which exceed Dr. Crosby's are Dr. Cuyler's and Dr. Talmage's in Brooklyn, Dr. Tucker's and Dr. Hall's in this city, Dr. Shaw's in Rochester, and Dr. Miller's in Philadelphia. In 1863 there were only 235 communicants. Two missions are sustained-Hope, founded in 1864; and Grace, founded in 1865. The gifts to charitable objects have amounted to $16,000 per year for the past seven years. DR. WOOLSEY is doing good work in calling attention to the corrupting literature that is afloat. In the selection of reading for children parents cannot be too careful. MR. ARCHIBALD G. McILWAINE, of Petersburg, Va., was buried there, April, 12th. He was the father of Rev. Dr. McIlwaine, the Secretary of Sustentation and Foreign Missions, and one of the most esteemed of the ruling elders of the Presbyterian Church of the Synod of Virginia. He was for forty years clerk of the session of the Tabb Street Church, and a Sunday-school teacher and superintendent for fifty-two years. He was a teacher in the first Sundayschool established in Petersburg. A native of Londonderry, he came to this country in 1818. COUNT TOLSTOY, Procurator-General of the Russian Holy Synod, in a report to the Czar, states that at the end of 1875 the Russian Greek Church possessed 38,602 churches, including cathedrals; 12,860 chapels and oratories; 18,887 arch-priests, priests, deacons, and precentors, and 56,500,000 members, of whom 29,000,000 are women, and 27,500,000 men. The sums received by the Church during the year amounted to about $9,500,000. MRS. VAN COTT, in her recent campaign in Buffalo, N. Y., pathetically described the agony she went through at her conversion before she parted with her wedding ring. She could easily give up her diamonds and jewelry; but "that little.worn hoop," which her husband had kissed before he died, she could not part with. "But the Lord would have the ring," and she finally yielded and was saved. The Interior thinks eloquent Presbyterian ladies may see here "how much they save to their Church by forbearing to smash the bars and let such things loose upon it." WEST FORTY-FOURTH STREET SYNAGOGUE. DR. PHILLIP SCHAFF recently addressed the New York Methodist preachers' meeting on the progress of the Bible revision. Part of the work has been prepared for the press; it will be three years before the revision is completed. MISSION NOTES. STANLEY'S CONVERT.-Mr. Stanley thus holds forth in the New York Herald on a subject important to all Christians: "One of the greatest satisfactions I experienced after reaching Zanzibar was the information received that the Church Mission to Uganda had arrived at its destination. It would not be out of place here to remind forgetful people that the Church Mission to Uganda is the result of an appeal I made to English philanthropists through your columns. The annual volume for 1875 of the Royal Geographical Society's proceedings will inform you that £8,000 were subscribed in one night. I have been told that an additional £5,000 was afterward subscribed to it. It was Colonel Linant de Bellefonds who conveyed this appeal into the hands of Colonel Gordon. It is to Colonel Gordon's kindness that I am indebted for its transmission to England. The appeal was written in April, 1875. During the brief visit I made to the Emperor of Uganda at that time, I undermined his belief and respect in the Mohammedan religion. The month of August saw me again at the Court of Mtesa. I spent 110 days with him on this second visit, during which time I translated, with the aid of Mr. Darlington, a pupil of the London Mission at Zanzibar, the entire Gospel of St. Luke, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, several chapters of St. Paul's Epistles, and a portion of the Book of Revelation, besides the Ten Commandments. During nearly all of this time I spent from two to six hours each day talking with him about the great love for mankind which the Saviour manifested while on earth. When we returned to his capital, in the latter part of October, I directed how the new church was to be built, and assisted the chief, Mkwenda, to plant the pillars and posts of the building. Considering the terrible things recorded in Colonel Long's book—'Victoria Niyanza'-the massacres of innocent men and women simply to do him honor, fair-minded Englishmen must recognize the fact that a great change must have taken place in the Emperor. Colonel Long was in Uganda, July, 1873. I arrived in the beginning of April, 1875, and had communications with him until March, 1876. When Mtesa was on the point of executing captives, I made him understand that, if he executed one person not convicted of murder, I would publish the fact to the whole world, and describe him as no better than the lowest savage. This was done in the presence of all his chiefs, numbering about 200. When he was about to sentence a great chief of the Wavuma to the stake for treason and a long course of enmity, I expostulated with the Emperor, and the chief was saved. Considering that Colonel Long but corroborates Captain Speke in his descriptions of Mtesa's character, and considering that Dr. Schultzer or Emin Bey, who succeeded me in Uganda, reports that the conversion of Mtesa to Christianity is real, am I not justified in claiming his conversion as my own work? Since Captain Speke and Colonel Long describe Mtesa as cruel, as sentencing men and women to death by hundreds, and that I saw, before appearing in his presence, the ashes of many victims in the place of execution; and since Colonel Linant de Bellefonds, since massacred near Gondokoro, reports in his journals that he heard me begin the conversion of the cruel despot; and Dr. Schultzer or Emin Bey reports that what Mr. Stanley stated about Mtesa's conversion is correct, and the Church Mission lately reported that the boy Darlington, left by me to continue the work in 1875, was still at his post, would it be too much to claim Mtesa as my convert ?" A REVIVAL is reported at Pekin, during which about a hundred Chinese have been converted. THE Indian Evangelical Review (Bombay) summarizes the results of missionary labor in Japan as follows: "Scarcely ten years have elapsed since the country (Japan) was entered by Protestant missionaries; less than ten since the work of preaching has been prosecuted with any degree of vigor. Now twelve societies are at work there. There are forty-six ordained missionaries and one ordained native missionary. Ninety stations are occupied, and the baptized converts number more than a thousand. There are sixteen medical mission stations. There are twenty mission schools, with more than five hundred scholars, of whom forty are preparing for the ministry. The translation of the Bible, under the auspices of four different societies, is rapidly progressing; and a weekly Christian newspaper, published by the missionaries of the American Board, has a circulation of eleven hundred copies. The country around Kiota is said to be quite aroused on the subject of Christianity, and the people are eager to hear and learn. The first Japanese pastor, ordained in January last, is supported by his own congregation. Two native Chinamen, converted to Christianity at the meetings held in the Chinese mission-house of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in San Francisco, have been licensed as local preachers. DR. SCUDDER says the Oriental nations will never become converted to Christianity until their women first become Christians, and he says that the women can be converted only by the personal agency of women who go there from Christian countries. Hindoo women will not listen to male missionaries. Dr. Scudder was in India for over twenty years, and ought to know. THE Abbé Debaize, who has been commissioned to cross Africa from Zanzibar to the Atlantic Ocean, embarked at Marseilles, April 23d. He expects to be gone three years. Nine missionaries from Algiers accompany him to Zanzibar, to establish Roman Catholic missions at Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika. SUNDAY-SCHOOL NOTES. INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL CONVENTION. The Rev. Dr. Haygood gives the following excellent account in the Methodist. Dr. Haygood is President of Emory College, in Georgia : "The Second International Sunday-school Convention met in Atlanta, Ga., April 17th. It adjourned April 19th, and was followed by a grand jubilee in Oglethorpe Park, near the city, Saturday, the 20th. I attended the session the first two days; was absent, with regret, the last day. Nearly all of the States were represented; also several Territories and the District of Columbia. There were nearly a dozen delegates from Canada. In all, it is stated reliably, there were four hundred and seventy-five delegates present. Atlanta is, more than any Southern city, accustomed to crowds, conferences, conventions of one intimately since 1852, your correspondent feels safe in saysort and another. But, having known our 'Gate City' sion than the 'Second International Sunday-school Coning that no gathering ever made a more satisfactory impresvention.' It was Christian fraternization from beginning to to end. I think I never saw in such a body as little denominational consciousness. Yet these men, nearly every one of them, had 'pronounced views.' I know not how many denominations were represented. It would have been hard to find out, for nobody seemed concerned to know. Major Angier, after the opening religious exercises, made a neat little speech of welcome, leaving to Governor A. H. Colquitt the duty of making the 'address of welcome.' The Gov-| The Christian men will bring peace to this country yet; the ernor is a man to honor and to love. It may be doubted politicians cannot if they would." whether any public man in our whole country is more loved. He has lived without reproach. The man who, knowing Alfred Colquitt, dislikes him, must be bad. Before eman cipation he was one of the largest planters in Georgia. Today the freedmen who were his slaves love and trust him as they do nobody else. He was one of the bravest of the Confederate generals. He is Governor by a Democratic majority of over eighty thousand. His address to President Hayes last year was as frank as it was patriotic. That address, and the address to the International Sunday-school Convention, came out of his heart and found echo in the hearts of nearly everybody in Georgia. Perhaps the editors of one or two 'outrage organs' should be excepted. The first address pleased all except a few Republican enemies of President Hayes; the last ought to please everybody, for it was full of patriotism and religion; also of good sense. The Rev. John Potts, D. D., Wesleyan Methodist, of Toronto, followed the Governor. THIS is what the Boston Herald has to say to pastors in reference to Sunday-schools: "Put away from your school all its humbuggeries, its clap-trap schemes, its perpetual hintings about conversion. Select the best persons, men Insist and women, in your congregations, for teachers. that these teachers, while using their own individuality in instruction, shall come under your own weekly supervision and guidance. Go into this work yourselves, as if these children were your own, and as if these teachers were your own elder sons and daughters, whom you desired especially to equip for this important work. Let the teachers understand that, if they wish to do duty as Christians, this is the best service they can render neglected children. Do for the boys and girls what a Cambridge pastor has, with very notable success, done for his schoolboys-make them believe that you love every one of them. Do thus much and the nonsense will disappear from your Sunday-school as quickly as snowflakes pass out of sight under an April sun. THE Churchinan is pronounced on a subject which the New York Evangelisi properly says is "of practical moment to all our churches." It may be set down as a positive fact that, if the children of churchmen go to Sunday-school instead of to church, the Sunday-school is an evil, and ought to be abandoned. We are sorry to say that, in many a congregation, the parents, as they go to church, meet their children on their way home from Sunday-school. This is a shocking perversion of the Church's work. Children ought to go to church with their parents, and if attendance upon Sunday-school and church successively is too wearisome, then the Sunday-schools should be given up. Whatever else may be done, or left undone, on the Lord's day, this should be the rule everywhere. father of the family, as the priest of the family, should gather about him and take with him to the church all the members of his family, whom, during the week, he has been instructing and leading in worship. Thus the public worship is a legitimate outgrowth of family worship, and the combined religious family life of a parish finds its natural results in a religious Church life. The Brother Potts took us by storm. I never saw a stranger win more people in thirty minutes. We felt as if Canada was just across the Georgia line. General Clinton B. Fiske followed, with one of his best speeches, the Canadian, who found himself sandwiched between two ex-generals-who fought, the one in gray,' the other in blue,' while the war was going on. If there is a hateful man in America, call him Democrat or Republican, it is the man who has fought only since the war was over. Is it not time that these enemies of our common country were put down and out? It was an undesigned coincidence that the three opening addresses were made by Methodists: a Southern Methodist ex-General, a Canadian Methodist preacher, and a Northern (no offense is intended when we say Northern in such a connection) Methodist ex-General. It was perfectly delightful to see these three men speaking from the same platform. 'Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.' I must give you the statistical secretary's summary. In the United States there are 76,580 Sunday-schools; 834,411 teachers; 6,423,285 scholars. Adding Canada, we have of schools, 81,488; of teachers, 871,844; of scholars, 6,734,890. The increase of scholars during the last three years has been, in the United States, 716,433; in Canada, 41,912. It was stated that fuller reports would show still larger figures. Comment is superfluous. These figures indicate power; they guarantee victory. We all thanked God, and took courage.' The Convention did a very graceful thing, when it effected its permanent organization, by electing Governor Colquitt President. The new President presided most capably. Wednesday afternoon was devoted to hearing reports from States and Provinces by selected representatives. They were full of cheer; one full of pathos-that by the representative from the Indian Territory. But I must not be tedious. All the meetings were interesting and profitable. They could scarcely be otherwise where so many men of sense and grace were together seeking, as with one heart, to advance the good cause of Christ-where Randolph, Hall, Vincent (facile princeps), Worden, Chamberlain, Meredith, Trumbull, and such like, were the chief speakers. A BAPTIST pastor in West Virginia, says: "Our Church Brother Fisher's management of the singing added interest is almost lost in the Sabbath-school." The great masses of and power to the meeting. Thursday evening, after the our churches in the South and Southwest are not in danger addresses were delivered, the Governor and his good wife of being lost in the Sunday-school, for they have nothing held a reception at the Executive mansion. What a throng or but little to do with them. They might lose much of of happy Christian men and women! We knew no their carnality and worldly mindedness by taking a more North, no South, no East, no West,' in the blessed fel- active part in the Sunday-school work; but in some places lowship of two happy hours. Whatever others may we notice a tendency to let the Sunday-school "run" the do, those who met in Governor Colquitt's parlors, Thurs- Church, as the cant phrase goes. A year or so ago we day evening, April 18th, 1878, can never hate each other. stepped into a Sunday-school connected with a leading The overture SOME objection to the continuance of the International Sunday-school Lessons appears among Presbyterians. The Rev. Dr. H. A. Boardman has read in the Presbytery of Philadelphia an overture to the next General Assembly, asking the preparation of a series of lessons for Presbyterian schools, "whereof one lesson each month shall be appropriated to the study of the catechism." "while states that the International Sunday-school Lessons, excellent in the main, make no adequate provision for the instruction of youth in the doctrines of the standards." The "rapid spread of destructive errors, and the supercilious disparagement of creeds which poisons the popular literature of the day," are cited as reasons for urging this The Presbytery has reserved its decision upon measure. the overture. |