Religious Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 14, 1882

Religious Notes.

By Editor

The four periodicals of the Salvation Army have a combined circulation of 400,000.

The Catholic Examiner emphatically endorses church fairs with their attendant gambling.

A new Congregational paper is to be started in Boston, and $100,000 has been secured as capital.

There are 92,653 Protestant churches in the United States, with 71,662 ministers, and 9,003,030 members.

The number of Congregational churches in the western part of the State of Pennsylvania has doubled during the last seven years.

The first Monday in January has been appointed as a day of general fasting and prayer for the colleges and general interest of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

There are now more than 4,000 Hindoo girls in mission-schools in Calcutta and its suburbs. The number of non-Christian females who can read and write has doubled in the last five years.

At the installation of Dr. Newman Smith, Dr. Duryea made some severe strictures on the abuse of church choirs, and said: "Music is chiefly used in our churches as an aid to the publishers of sheet music."

A fashionable church in New York has an "invalid room," a luxurious apartment near the pulpit, but out of sight of the congregation, where invalids can sit, lie down, walk around, leave or enter at any time without disturbing any one else, yet at the same time be able to hear the entire service.

The American Baptist Flag, published in St. Louis, says: "Over one hundred firms in St. Joseph, Mo., have signed agreements not to pay off their help on Saturday. Monday in future will be the pay-day. Thus the business world recognizes the wisdom of keeping a Sabbath." And so the leaven is working.

Rev. Dr. Hepworth, speaking of the "Passion Play," which Mr. Morse is trying to bring before the people of New York, says that in the little group which figure so prominently in the real passion week, there was only one man who was so mean and sordid as to make the crucifixion a matter of financial speculation, and that he had sufficient sense remaining after the deed was accomplished to go and hang himself.

There is a great deal of discussion going on over the site of Paradise. Dr. Delitzsch claims that Paradise occupied the ground upon which Babylon was afterwards built, but Prof. Paine scouts the idea. As for ourselves, we are not troubled over the matter. A far more important matter engages our attention, namely, How shall we gain a home in it? If these Doctors would devote their talents to the solution of this question, they would do themselves and their hearers much more good.

While we value the Sabbath-school very highly as a means of imparting religious instruction to children, we should not undervalue the importance of home training. Rev. A. R. Crandall, President of the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference, made the following remarks in his opening address: "There are truths of religion which can be planted in the mind and heart of the child only at home. No people can guard too vigilantly the truth that the primary school of the church is the home. Half a dozen towering truths wrought into the life of the child, at the hands of those to whom God has committed his tender years, are worth more all through life than the whole vast plain of Sabbath-school instruction."

The corner-stone was recently laid in New York for a new convent for a strict order of nuns, called the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. It is said that their fasts are very severe, that the nuns are compelled to arise every night at midnight for two hours' devotion in the chapel, that they can hold no communication whatever with the outside world, and that no fires are allowed in the building. The Independent justly says that the Board of Health ought to have something to say on the subject, in the name of humanity. Rome has plenty of dupes who are willing to sacrifice themselves at her beck, and no one can interfere so long as this self-sacrifice consists in being uselessly shut away from the world; but neither murder nor suicide should be allowed under the guise of religion.