Religious Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 16, 1882

Religious Notes.

By Editor

—A lady has sent the Lutheran Board of Missions $2,000 as a fund for training native preachers in India.

—There are in Virginia 207,559 Baptists, 108,500 Methodists, 24,604 Presbyterians, 12,778 Episcopalians, 14,000 Lutherans, and 13,500 Disciples.

—The Legislature of Utah adopts defiant talk, and says that Utah asks nothing of the Government. The Woman's Exponant is outspoken in favor of polygamy.

—A complaint against the proprietor of Woodward's Gardens, for violation of the Sunday law, was dismissed, on the ground that the law does not apply to theaters.

—A minister in southern California, writing to the Central Baptist, says: "Our church will hold about 150, and by getting up a concert we can fill it." No doubt of it.

—Bishop Crowther reports that the average Sunday congregations at the stations on the Niger now amount together to 3,472 souls, of whom he reckons 1,599 as native Christians, and 451 as communicants.

—The "American Sabbath" is the latest for Sunday. The reader will observe that "American Sabbath" and "Christian Sabbath" are not necessarily synonymous. It will require an Act of Congress to make them so.

—Anti-polygamy meetings are the order of the day all over the country. The expression sounds well, but the Mormons will continue to laugh, as the boy in the apple-tree did when tufts of grass were thrown at him.

—It is said that the Pope is about to establish diplomatic relations with the United States, having created the office of Papal Delegate. When the United States upholds the Pope's Sunday by law, such a delegate to the ecclesiastical branch of this Government would be very appropriate; but, till then, it is difficult to see what he can do, since this country has no ecclesiastical power at present, and the Pope has no civil power.

—A "rush" is expected at a certain church in San Francisco; so its paper says. Are the famous revivalists going to work there? Oh, no; "The ladies will give one of their genuine, old-fashioned, New England dinners—brown bread, baked beans, coffee, etc., best quality. Dinner from 5:30 to 7:30, and then a musical entertainment of an hour; all for the small sum of twenty-five cents." That will bring them. For filling churches, a good dinner will discount the gospel by large odds.

—The Society of the Holy Infancy (Catholic) has, within less than forty years, baptized (?) 500,000 infants, and placed 80,000 in orphan asylums. The Master-General commends this work and gives the following precious bit of information. His authority for the statement is not given: "Every year, by means of this infantile apostolate, a vast number of children, snatched from eternal death, are sent to Heaven to complete the number of the elect, whose pure and innocent legions, by their number and stainless beauty, constitute the most resplendent trophy of the church militant."

—The Catholic Mirror, in an article entitled "Head Off the Devil," advises as a means of so doing, the providing of parish libraries. As an example of how this may be done, it gives the following instance: "In 1880 Father Downey was stationed at the Immaculate Conception Church in this city (Baltimore). He had a lot of bric-a-brac, won at fairs and presented by friends. He raffled it off, and with the proceeds determined to found a parochial library. He bought a couple of hundred volumes," &c. The Independent very properly concludes that the devil himself lent a hand in that "heading off."

—A correspondent of the Christian Union writes to that paper that he has doubts as to his conversion, and among other reasons for his doubt, he says he enjoys reading Mr. Beecher's sermons better than he does the Bible. Whereupon the C. U. comforts him with the assurance that Mr. Beecher's sermons will answer the purpose just as well as the Bible. It says the Bible "is a system of divinely revealed and illustrated truth. It is the truth that God is a Father, that man is a prodigal son, that the Father's love has provided for the son's repentance, and awaits the son's return. Moses illustrates these truths best to some men, David to others, Paul to yet others. If you find them best illustrated to your mind and heart in the modern preacher, it is your privilege to find them there. . . . Water is water, whether you dip it up from the bubbling spring or draw it from an aqueduct half a dozen miles or more away." We would refer the reader to Rom. 12:3, and remark that sometimes the vessel through which the water passes has a great deal to do with its purity.