News and Notes | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 40.

News and Notes.

RELIGIOUS.

—There are twenty-one Protestant churches in the city of Rome.

—Lutheran services are conducted in the United States, in thirteen different languages.

—Two colored missionaries have been sent to the Congo by the colored Baptists of the Northwest.

—The Bishop of Rochester does not approve of the popular clamor for short sermons, and advises his ecclesiastics not to be swayed by the “worldly cry.”

—The Sunday School Times very happily characterizes the Buddhist fancy of Heaven, as “a place of utter unconsciousness—an infinite puddle of glorified oblivion.”

—The Indiana Methodist Conference has condemned the use of tobacco as uncleanly and unhealthful, and the delegates promised to preach against it once each year.

—The profaning of the Mohammedan mosque at Delhi, by the tying of a squealing pig within the sacred edifice led to an assault upon the Hindoos, in which several persons were killed.

—The Chinese Government has very promptly paid $10,000 to the Canada Presbyterian Mission in Formosa for property destroyed in the Franco-Chinese War. The mission now has 38 stations with 1,273 converts, all the result of fourteen years’ labor.

—At the recent meeting of the West Jersey Presbytery a resolution was unanimously passed, giving it as the opinion of the Presbytery that church members who required applications for licenses to sell liquor were proper subjects for church discipline, and church sessions were enjoined to deal with such persons by censure or suspension from church ordinance.

—The real estate belonging to Trinity Church, New York, is worth about $6,000,000, and the annual increase of the parish is about $555,000. This is used to support seven churches under the rector, three or four of which are free, with eighteen clergymen and a musical staff of over 100; and its grants to twenty other churches and to charitable institutions exceed over $100,000 a year.

—There are about 1,000 Chinese in the city of Chicago. There are five Sabbath-schools of Chinese pupils, with an average attendance of 125. One of these schools holds sessions five evenings in each week. Eighteen Chinese are members of “The Chinese Christian Association,” and eight of these are preparing for missionary work. Several of them are preparing to return to their Chinese homes to engage in labor there.

—The Christian at Work says: “A correspondent says that he witnessed the smoking of tobacco in the principal Lutheran Church in Rotterdam. In this instance the smoker was one of the officials of the church; he lighted his cigar near the organ and walked up the aisle enjoying it immensely after service.” And in this country we have actually seen men walk up the aisle in a church, with their hats on and their hands in their pockets.

—The receipts of the British and Foreign Bible Society for the past year were £238,391, or in our currency, $1,156,196.35; those of the American Bible Society were $523,910.59, a total of $1,680,106.94; their total receipts for their entire history have been $71,639,682.48. The total issues of the British and Foreign Bible Society last year were 4,123,904, and of the American 1,437,440, a total of 5,561,344, and for the last two years of 11,270,351, being a fraction over 18,000 for each working day of those years. The total issues of these Societies amount to 155,198,215 copies.

—When men begin to drift away from the plain word of God, dropping out a doctrine here and a whole book there, their theories of truth soon become limited only by their desires. For instance, the Christian Leader (Congregationalist), in advocating the “new theology,” says: “If it is not true that Jesus Christ not only may but will be preached in another life to every one who did not hear of him in this life, it certainly ought to be true.” It is hardly safe to rely on the probability that the Lord will accept this suggested amendment to his word. Until we have direct evidence that he has done so, it will be the part of wisdom to heed the admonition: “Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” Prov. 30:6.

—The Independent says: “The people of the island of St. Kilda are great Sabbatarians. A correspondent of a Glasgow paper writes that he was refused more than a cupful of water for his Sunday morning ablutions, on the ground that the Free Church minister declared it to be a violation of the fourth commandment to draw water on Sunday.” When a “free church” means an enslaved people, especially as to the conscience, we might expect such a perversion of the fourth commandment; but so well informed a paper as the Independent, ought not to apply the term Sabbatarians to Sunday observers of whatever degree of strictness. Sabbatarians are those who keep the Sabbath,—the seventh day of the week. Sunday-keepers have no more claim to be called Sabbatarians than Sunday has to be called Sabbath.