Religious Notes | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1882

Religious Notes.

—The Pope created seven cardinals, March 27, including Archbishop McCabe of Dublin.

—Dr. Lilienthal, an eminent Jewish Rabbi, of Cinninati, has been stricken with paralysis, and there is no hope of his recovery.

—The League of Freedom bailed their members by the hundreds who were arrested in San Francisco for violating the Sunday Law.

—The commission appointed in Germany to revise Luther's translation of the Bible has held its last sitting and brought its work to a close.

—The Scottish United Presbyterian Church gathered in for foreign missions last year $167,725, an advance of upward of $15,000 on the previous year.

Dr. Kalloch calls those church members and ministers who speak in behalf of the Chinese, "Chinaphobists." Wonder where Dr. K. graduated in philology?

—A petition, numerously signed by the inhabitants of London, asking that museums and art galleries be kept open on Sunday afternoons, has been presented in the British Parliament.

—Dr. Jessup, of Syria writes that the Sultan has granted permission to Russian Jews to settle in Asia Minor, but prohibits them from entering Syria or Palestine on the ground that they might attempt to form a Judaic empire.

—News from London says: The Mansion House Jewish Committee reports that £64,000 has been received, of which £27,000 has already been voted for emigration and other purposes. Of 228 families assisted the majority have gone to America.

—At a San Francisco Sunday law meeting Judge Lake said: "This Sunday law is reasonable, for it allows citizens to do everything on a Sunday but go into these corner rum-shops." How any man who has read the law can make such a wild statement is a wonder to us.

—The authorities in San Francisco decided to make no more arrests under the Sunday Law, having too many cases on hand to handle. The friends of the law then besought the Commissioners to revoke the licenses of all transgressors. The officers finally changed their mind.

—Papers signed by 300 persons, including the Earl of Aberdeen, Samuel Morley, Canon Farrar, Fleming, Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon and 253 other clergymen, have been forwarded to Moody and Sankey at Glasgow, asking them to spend a year in London in evangelical work.

—From the North Indian mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church it is reported that there is a growing prospect that the whole Chumar caste, which embraces about half a million people, will ere long come over in a body to Christianity, which may be true, but we have but little confidence in these wholesale conversions, such as used to take place when a warrior embraced the faith of the church, followed by his fighting hosts.

—The Pacific Churchman, speaking of the prevalent sin of withholding means from the Lord's work, says: "Men talk of giving their hearts to the Lord, as though it was a sentimental impulse, an emotional excitement. * Nothing can be more shallow or misleading than the prevalent notion that religion alone among all other interests, may be left to triumph or defeat, with no pecuniary resources but the scanty, precarious, and capricious contributions of its so-called friends."

—The Occident (Presbyterian), of San Francisco, severely criticises the creed as adopted by the First Congregational Church of that city, of which Mr. Barrows is the newly-elected pastor. It says the doctrine of the Trinity has been rejected; also that of the Divine sovereignty and decrees; of original sin; the relation of a world's ruin to the first transgression; that neither the word "atonement," nor the atonement itself is retained; and the doctrine of eternal retribution is left out. What is Congregationalism, anyhow?

—The San Francisco Pacific Methodist (South) says of the Sunday law: "We do not look for the fulfillment of our desires in the execution of this law. Its present form is weak and inefficient, and the opposition of capital and whisky is thoroughly organized and energetic. * The campaign is to be carried on with active zeal. Mass meetings will be held, and every aid will be given to officers of the law. Political parties had better be careful of their platform in this direction. Any yielding or temporizing on this and kindred subjects will be resented by the better class of our citizens, who, in all cases, are the power in the land."

—The San Francisco Jewish Times takes issue with the Christian clergymen of the city who claim Sunday to be a divine institution, and avers that there is "nothing divine about it; 'that not one particle of authority for its observance as a Sabbath can be found in the New Testament, and that, in fact 'it had its origin with the mandate of Constantine, the 'cruel and blood-stained emperor,' as impartial history calls him." The Times quotes the advice of Martin Luther to any upon whom ascetic Sunday restrictions should be imposed, viz., "to ride on it, to dance on it, to do anything that will reprove this encroachment on Christian spirit and liberty," and adds that Major Whittle gave the Sunday law preachers some good counsel the other day when he told them that "what the people wanted was less law and more gospel.—Call.

—Speaking of the miracles of healing by faith, the California Christian Advocate says: "We could never understand why the very clear, positive, and final teachings of the New Testament could be satisfactorily set aside or entirely neglected by the church. It must be obvious to every candid Christian that Christ's miracles of healing were only the beginning of miracles that might be continued in the church. * The healing of the sick through faith was common down to the age of Constantine. Justin Martyn, Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, and Clement, all believed it, and some give instances of healing. The Waldenses, Moravians, Huguenots, Covenanters, Friends, Baptists, and Methodists believed it, and their ministers give instances of healing in answer to prayer. Richard Baxter, Edward Irving, and Thomas Erskine, all illustrious in God's church, believed and gave instances of such healing."

—The San Francisco Chronicle, speaking of "Prejudice" in general, says: Numberless heathen superstitions survive in the common life and religious worship of nations which have been Christian for many hundred years. Among the Lapps and the Finnish peoples of Northern Russia the religion of Christ seems like a foreign scion engrafted upon heathen tradition and native prejudice. The names of heathen gods and goddesses are perpetuated in our names of the days of the week. Monday will to all time be "Moon-day;" Tuesday, "Tiwes-day" (named from the Scandinavian god of war); Wednesday, "Woden's day;" Thursday, "Thor's day;" Friday, "Freia's day;" Saturday, "Saturn's day;" and Sunday, "Sun day," or the day of the sun. Our church worship perpetuates the memory of heathen temple service and sacrificial rites, and the modern pastor stands in unbroken line with the priests of ancient Greece and Rome.