Religious Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 9, 1882

Religious Notes.

By Editor

The Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn, N. Y., has fifty Chinamen among its members.

Rev. Enoch Pond, D. D., President of Bangor Theological Seminary, died recently, aged ninety years.

The London Echo states as a fact that Dean Stanley’s life was sacrificed to the bad drainage at the deanery.

It is reported from Walla Walla, W. T., that Judge Wingard has sustained the Sunday law, and that it will be obeyed.

Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York, the famous Unitarian preacher and editor, died January 30, aged sixty-eight years.

The Greek Church in Russia has about 35,000 churches, beside the cathedrals, and the State contributes over three millions a year to their support.

The Catholic Bishop of Hongkong, China, says that the Catholic mission there took 400,000 Chinese children last year, and is bringing them up in the Catholic Church.

The Independent thinks it could name orthodox Christian ministers who eat oysters and smoke cigars on the “Sabbath,” and who, notwithstanding, retain their orthodoxy.

There are fifteen Jewish synagogues in Chicago, having congregations that aggregate about 20,000. Chicago is said to have the largest Hebrew population of any city of equal numbers in the world.

Prof. Robertson Smith’s claims that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, are being sharply criticised. Many papers were lauding his learning, and his fearlessness in proclaiming his views; but now that other scholars, equally learned, have shown the entire fallacy of his deductions, they are beginning to anchor again to the old Pentateuch.

A correspondent of a secular paper, speaking of a church that is supported by collections, indulges in the following bit of unconscious sarcasm: “I never go to church without leaving my ten cents. I believe in paying my way.” One cannot help wondering what kind of preaching it is, for which ten cents is considered adequate compensation.

A Circuit Court in Kentucky has declared the State law against Sunday work unconstitutional and void as regards railroads, because it interferes with commerce, and a State may not interfere with the mails. Whereupon a religious journal remarks that the friends of the Sunday should look to Congress for redress. It thinks they ought to base their claims on the commandment of God, and not on the “demands of society,” “general custom,” etc. Herein it differs with some of our California friends. Would it not be well for the Sunday law agitators to meet together and decide upon what ground to press its claims.