News and Notes | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 9, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 35.

News and Notes.

RELIGIOUS.

—John Dougall, editor of the New York Weekly Witness, died suddenly of heart disease, August 19, at the house of his son-in-law, at Flushing, L. I. He was seventy-eight years of age.

—Mr. David Jones, a Welsh merchant, who died recently at Liverpool, has left a bequest of $10,000 to the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Connection, for the purpose of preparing missionaries for work in India.

—The Pope has published a decree, dated the 13th of July, reinstating the Jesuit Order in all the privileges conferred upon them by his predecessors ever since their foundation, notwithstanding the decree of Clement XIV., pronounced against them in 1773.

—Professor C. E. Stowe, author of “History of the Books of the Bible,” and other important works, died at Hartford, Conn., August 22, at the age of eighty-four. Professor Stowe held professorships successively in Dartmouth College, Lane Theological Seminary, Bowdoin College, and Andover Theological Seminary.

—Lord Lonsdale is a young rowdy, and one of the principal rakes of the English “nobility.” Yet he holds the appointment to livings of forty clergymen of the Church of England, who are supposed to minister to 50,000 people. This is but a sample of the corrupt and corrupting fruit that is borne by the union of Church and State.

—Edward Von Hartmann, in his “Religion of the Future,” affirms that, “without eudæmonological pessimism must evolutionistic optimism lead to irreligious secularism; without evolutionistic optimism must eudæmonological pessimism become an indolent despondency, or degenerate into religious asceticism.” We dare say that not one of our readers ever before looked at the matter in that “light.”

—The Christian Leader quotes a noted Universalist as saying that “the mass of our people, ministry included, do not yet at heart believe in missionary work, nor in doing anything for anybody but themselves.” The wonder with us is why, holding the views that they do, they should think it necessary to do anything for themselves. The natural selfishness of mankind may, however, account for this.

—There are twelve German societies laboring in India, China, Africa, the East Indies, Australia, and Palestine. They are represented by 517 missionaries at 342 stations, are employing 2,500 native agents, and have in charge 193,975 native Christians. Of these, 72,000 are communicants, while 40,642 children are taught in their 790 schools. The total contributions of these societies last year were $1,276,800.