p. 323 | Religious Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 20, 1882

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 27.

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Religious Notes.

By Editor

—Germany has a Roman Catholic population of 15,000,000.

—The British people gave $5,310,950 for foreign missions last year.

—A cathedral, costing $300,000, has just been consecrated in New Zealand.

—A Japanese Sunday-school paper, published in Tokio, has a monthly circulation of more than three thousand.

—A discussion is going on in the columns of the Christian Union as to whether or not death ends probation. The C. U. inclines to the opinion that it does not.

—Bishop Levi Scott, senior bishop of the M. E. Church, died at his home in Delaware, July 13. He had been in the ministry over half a century, and had been bishop for thirty years.

—The people of the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, by a vote of 26,729 to 17,945, have adopted a law prohibiting unnecessary labor on Sunday, theatrical representations, street processions, etc.

—The General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church have resolved, after a full discussion, that "the doctrine of sinless perfection is not authorized by the Scriptures, and is a dogma of dangerous tendencies."

—As a specimen of modesty, the following is refreshing. The writer has just before given an abstract of a sermon preached by himself: "I have given a sketch of this sermon; it is better heard than read, and if people want to have some light that is shining in a dark place, that God has been pleased to give me, call me out, and stay up my hands with the necessaries of life, and I will be glad to give it to you."

—Of infant baptism, the present Church-of-England Bishop of Salisbury, has said: "I must candidly and broadly state my conviction that there is not one passage one word in Scripture which directly proves it—not one word the undeniable and logical power of which can be adduced to prove, either in any way of fact, that in the Scriptural age infants were baptized. Nor, I believe, is there any such direct statement to be found in any writings of the Fathers of the church before the latter end of the second century after Christ."—Christian Index.

—The Independent has the following; "It is pleasant to see how surely, if slowly, our western borders, however full of ungodliness they may be, gradually come under Christian control. Probably California contained for some years the most godless population in the land. For some years, the church seemed to be utterly without influence, while all the wealth and fashion of San Francisco was irreligious beyond description; but now the churches are a decided power, and the whole Pacific Coast is becoming as Christian as other parts of the country." Can anybody tell whether this is intended as a compliment to California, or a thrust at the other parts of the country?

—The Boston Journal tells of a church in Massachusetts that has recently secured a pastor, after a nine years' struggle and examination as to who might prove the most desirable man. That paper says: "Two hundred and forty candidates had been heard, and the final settlement was accomplished over the protests of a minority, which broke up one council on the score of technicalities, and endeavored to prevent the action of the second. Restlessness and the critical habit grow upon such a congregation until it clamors for a fresh candidate each Sunday, very much as the Roman populace used to shout for a new victim in the arena. Spiritual barrenness and absence of religious activity, are as sure to attend such a system as night is to follow day."

—It seems that England's troubles are not wholly political, but ecclesiastical as well. A New York paper says: "The tone of the Ritualist party is rapidly becoming more and more threatening. The doctrine that the Queen is the head of the church is denounced and denied. They say that the supremacy of the Crown was admitted when the Crown was independent, but that it is now only an imagination; that the Ministry is the executive head of the Government, and is no longer appointed by or representative of the Crown, since Parliament has wrested that power and now compels the appointment of a Ministry in accord with the majority of the Commons. The Ritualists say also that it is absurd to admit that Parliament has any sovereignty or headship over the church, since in modern times it is not required that a member of Parliament be a member of the Church of England, and he be a non-conformist, a dissenter, or an infidel. The Ritualists are increasing in numbers. More than a fourth, perhaps more than a third, of the clergy are claimed as belonging to them. They now demand the repeal of the Public Worship Regulation Act, and the settlement of the principle that Parliament shall not legislate for the church without the co-operation of the church in convocation. This demand is accompanied with the distinct threat that unless establishment is defined in that way they will go in for disestablishment. And they say, with great appearance of truth, that if they once join the dissenters of England in demanding the separation of Church and State, they will form a balance of power party so strong in every parish of England as to compel disestablishment."