p. 542 | News and Notes

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 34.

News and Notes.

RELIGIOUS.

—The late Simon Samson left $50,000 to be devoted to the improvement of the condition of the Jews in the Holy Land.

—The Lutherans are going to build a church in Jerusalem. More than $80,000 has already been collected for the purpose.

—Chicago University, with its valuable buildings and grounds, has passed irrevocably from the possession of the Baptists. A debt of $210,000 was what crushed it.

—Pope Leo XIII. is going to erect a beautiful monument to Pope Innocent III. Well, if there is any one man more than another to whom the Papacy owes a monument, Innocent III. is the one.

—The society of Friends, or Quakers, seems to be slowly dying out. The whole number of members in Great Britain is only fifteen thousand, which is less than half the total recorded at the beginning of the present century.

—Dr. Philip Schaff, the church historian, has been spending the summer in Berlin, attending lectures at the University there, and studying, in the Royal Library, the sources of what will be his history of the Reformation period.

—“The Pope has received a letter, couched in the most respectful form, from the Prince Regent of Bavaria, assuring the Sovereign Pontiff that he would regard it as his chief duty to protect the Catholic Church.” This is another triumph of the crafty policy of Leo XIII. for the restoration of the Papacy.

—The Evangelical Messenger states that in the United States “nine-tenths of the contributions to foreign missions are given by one-tenth of the church membership, while only one-half of the membership gives anything. The average amount per member is fifty cents per annum—one-seventh part of a cent per day for the conversion of a thousand millions of heathen!”

—The Watchman very aptly says: “Some ministers in this time, as concerns their theology, remind us of the woman whose dress was not quite clean enough to wear, and not quite dirty enough to wash. They do not believe the old theology firmly enough to be able to preach it with power, and they do not believe the ‘new theology’ enough to be able to satisfy their consciences with it.”

—In Wales, the farmers have refused to pay the tithe rent that is laid upon them by the Government, in support of the clergy of the Established Church. About nine-tenths of the Welsh are Dissenters from the Church of England, and they have at last grown tired of paying a tenth of all that grows, for the support of men who preach for the aristocracy. There has been some rioting, and serious trouble is feared. It is as though all the farmers in this country were compelled by law to pay a tithe of all for the support of the Episcopal Church, without any regard whatever to anything they might pay for the support of the church to which they might belong, or whether they belonged to any. This same principle is that the National Reform party wants to establish in this country.