p. 251 | Religious Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 1, 1882

Religious Notes.

The London Spectator thinks that religious sensationalism succeeds better in England than any form of purely spiritual teaching.

It is reported that a revival in the Greek Church at Beirut has resulted from the translated sermons of Mr. Moody, issued by the local press.

The Connecticut Bible Society has in the course of the last year supplied 1,517 destitute Protestant families with the Scriptures. It has sold over 19,000 volumes, and given away over 5,000.

We learn that the leading pastors and influential Christians of New Orleans have organized a "Lord's Day League," for the education of the people in the better observance of Sunday.

The United Presbyterian Assembly, at Monmouth, Ill., discussed and finally tabled the question of instrumental music in the churches. The vote was a close one, and may be reconsidered.

One of the beauties of church and State was lately made known in England. A dissipated young earl who died at the age of twenty-six from the effects of vicious life, had thirty-nine church livings in his gift.

The Pacific says that a creed, meaning a written symbol of doctrine, is "vital in a Congregational Church." That is where a Congregational Church differs from the apostolic churches.—Independent.

A Chicago clergyman lately said in public that if children in that city can be saved from drunkenness till they are fourteen, they are almost certain of future safety. What a comment on the condition of the young!

There are twenty churches connected with the Harport Mission of the American Board in Asiatic Turkey. During the past year they paid $8,541 for pastor's salaries and benevolent objects. This was an average of $12 for each member. Here is a lesson.

The Freeman's Journal, a strong Catholic organ, says: "New England theology will go on conceding until nothing is left to concede. There is very little now. It is difficult to tell where Congregationalism ends and Rationalism begins, in the minds of these 'conceders.'"

The Christian Union says: "The first chapter of Genesis is poetry. It is to be classed with the Psalms of David, not with the book of Chronicles or Kings. It is the language of worship and of imagination, not of observation." We believe Bob Ingersoll holds the same view.

The British and Foreign Bible Society has, at a cost of $20,000, produced a Bible in the Basuto language. This is the ninth completed Bible in the native languages of Africa. It is the first Bible the society has published, the text of which is divided into paragraphs, instead of into chapters and verses.

The American Presbyterians have just had a remarkable response to the constant demand for men to go into the missionary field. Twenty-nine candidates from the theological seminaries of the denomination have applied to the Missionary Board to be sent out as missionaries during the coming summer and fall.

A clergyman of Portland, Me., has been making some inquiries as to why more people do not attend church, and arrives at the conclusion that it is because church-going is not made obligatory upon children. In the Sunday-schools of the Congregational Churches, out of a membership of 2,100, only 248 attended church. By making inquiries among the representative Christian men of Portland, he learns that of those who became particularly eminent and useful in the church in mature life, nearly ninety-eight per cent. went to church regularly as boys, that ninety-four per cent. of them were required to go, and that ninety-six per cent. were not repelled from church, even for a little while, by such requirement. The most of them replied that they never thought of staying away from church; it was expected that they would go as a matter of course. It is not so nowadays.