pt a part of
the people of Mexico); Australia; India; South Africa; and, this month,
after long consideration, Japan has officially adopted English as the
language of public affairs, to be taught in all the common schools. By
the way, the newly elected Secretary of Education of the Japanese
Commonwealth is an American; a graduate of the High School at Chicago.
The extension of the use of spoken, written, and printed English in
China is quite rapid, and so it is in Egypt, on the Continent of Europe,
and in South America. It truly bids fair within a century to become the
universal language.

* * * * *

The purchase of Jerusalem and the greater part of Palestine by an
association of wealthy Jews, headed by the Rothschild, Montefiore, and
Belmont families, is an accomplished fact. Along with this it may be
noted that very many Jews have recently been converted to Christianity.
There is a large tabernacle for the worship of evangelical Jews just
built upon the Mount of Olives. At one of the first meetings of the
Sanhedrim after the Russian municipal government had been withdrawn, a
rabbi, bearing the significant name of Nicodemus, proposed this question
for discussion: "Ought we now to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah?" By a
small majority, the question was indefinitely postponed without debate.

Jerusalem is now lit by gas, except an electric light in one of the
central streets. Horse-cars are running in every direction; and a
steam-train passes daily to and from Jaffa on the Mediterranean. The
Mosque of Omar has been purchased by the Young Men's Christian
Association, which has within its walk a Bible-School of nearly 1000
pupils of all ages. A college for both sexes is in full operation at
Jericho. An English weekly and an American daily newspaper are issued in
Jerusalem, and an English daily paper also in Smyrna.

* * * * *

We learn that the Joint Commission appointed by England, France, Italy,
and Greece for the provisional government of Egypt, is meeting with fair
success; bad as the financial state of that country has been. The
American "Egyptian Improvement Company," with a capital of forty
millions of dollars, is paying an annual dividend of six per cent.;
which is extraordinary for these times. New explorations along the Nile,
near Luxor, have unearthed a number of royal tombs, with extremely
interesting paintings, sarcophagi, and hieroglyphic insc