p. 431 | Religious Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 21, 1882

Religious Notes.

By Editor

-The State of Michigan has 239 Congregational churches. The total membership is 16,957.

-The London Sunday-school Union suggests that the 15th and 16th of October next be set apart for universal prayer in behalf of Sunday-schools.

-Two Mormon Missionaries who have been very successful in making converts in York Co., N. C., have been warned by the citizens to leave or they will be hanged to a tree.

-The 21st of August was the 150th aniversary of the beginning of the foreign mission work of the Moravian Church. A missionary jubilee was held on that day at Bethlehem, Pa.

-The principal political speakers are unanimous in saying that the Sunday-law and the anti-monopoly questions are the two great issues of the day, and they invariably give Sunday the first place.

-The Presbyterian Church of Canada has started a building fund of $100,000, to which $65,000 has been already subscribed, for the purpose of erecting churches in Manitoba, for the immigrants who are pouring into that Territory.

-The Tokio Christian Association makes the remarkable statement that "a large proportion of the Japanese who went to America for education became Christians; but that not a single instance was known to them of one who had gone to Germany, France, or England becoming a Christian."

Last week we recorded the fact that a Sunday-school near Atlanta, Ga., had a Superintendent who had held office for twenty-five years. And now comes the statement, "the Honorable Jacob Sleeper has been Superintendent of a Methodist Episcopal Sunday-school in Boston for fifty-two consecutive years." Next.

-There is a superabundance of ministers in all the nonconformist denominations of Great Britain. The Primitive Methodist Colleges have been closed for a time, and the Wesleyan Conference is at its wits' end to know what is to be done for the probationers who have honorably completed their career, but for whom no suitable positions are vacant.

-Rabbi Levi, of the Jewish Congregation in Oakland, recently delivered an address to the Young Men's Hebrew Union, of San Francisco, on Jewish feasts. Speaking of the general belief that the world has been in existence only about 6,000 years, he said: "This prevalent idea is an absurdity, as it is now scientifically established that the world is much older."

-A young negro, who was formerly a slave, was recently undergoing an examination in New York, with reference to his going as a missionary to Africa. When he was asked his habit as to the use of tobacco, he replied that he did not use it at all; that a gentleman would not use it, and that a Christian gentleman would not want to use it. Who could give a better answer?

-The Christian at Work gives a very good hit at the almost indiscriminate giving of the title "D. D." It says that if a minister has reached the age of forty years, has married, and has not been tried for heresy, he may reasonably expect the title. The title is often given, also, to the pastors of city churches who do not like to have the name of being served by a man without "D. D." to his name.

-There is a Congregational Church of over 200 members at Nantucket, R. I., whose acting pastor is a woman, Miss Louise S. Baker. She gives satisfaction in every way, yet the church over which she presides is declared vacant in the Year Book, owing to the prejudice against women acting in such capacity. A writer in the Advance asks: "Is there any reason why this earnest servant of Christ should not be ordained according to the Congregational idea? Is there any unwritten or written law forbidding it, providing she is sound in the faith, apt to teach, and full of the Holy Spirit?"

-The story is told that at prayer-meeting one night a brother proceeded to give his ideas of future punishment. He believed there would be punishment—he even believed in the orthodox hell—but there was a way out; there was final restoration to happiness for all the impenitent. When he sat down there was silence, till at last the old pastor arose and said slowly and deliberately: "The brother who last spoke told us of a way to Heaven that leads through hell. Those that want to try the road to Heaven via hell may take it if they choose, but as for me, I am going to Heaven by the direct road, and I advise others to take that road too. Let us pray."

-It is a homely adage that "curses, like chickens, come home to roost." Certain parties in California are now experiencing the truth of this. During the excitement over the Sunday Law last winter, it was quite the fashion to denounce the SIGNS OF THE TIMES as working in the interest of the whisky party, "playing into the hands of the League of Freedom," etc., because, on purely religious grounds, it opposed the Sunday Law. These same parties are now kicking against the Sunday-Law plank of the Republican platform, because it is not stringent enough; and now the Christian Advocate says of them: "Men who pretend to be temperance men, and now threaten to bolt the Republican ticket and to defeat it, are simply tools and agents of the League of Freedom." Although this is severe on the Rescue, we confess to being somewhat amused. There is the promise of a lively tempest in the Sunday teapot.

-And still we have another mystical interpretation. On Mark 13:27, "And then shall he send his angels and shall gather together his elect from the four winds," &c. The Christian at Work comments thus: "The Son of man would send his angels, i. e., his messengers or preachers to proclaim the gospel—the good tidings of the new kingdom—to all his chosen or elect ones in all quarters of the globe. And all this took place as Jesus predicted it would, before the 'generation' then around him passed away. In the year 70, i. e., 40 years after his crucifixion, the Holy City fell, and some of his disciples then present lived to see the gospel preached, and the Messianic kingdom established throughout the whole known world." Just one question: If the kingdom was established throughout the whole world, at the destruction of Jerusalem, why do we still pray, "Thy kingdom come"? And again, to what place were the elect then gathered? And if the gathering took place then, what becomes of the righteous since that time?

-It seems that Christians are not alone in missionary work. The Hindus and Mohammedans are using the printing-press to combat Christianity. The Advance says: "Based on their old books, fascinating stories of gods and ancient heroes are issued by the million, as are also translations of popular infidel books. These are peddled at the doors of all the schools in the hope of holding young India to the old beliefs. In Lucknow and Cawnpore there are no less than forty-five publishing houses doing this work. One of their publishers received $4,000 from a well-to-do Mohammedan to assist in printing the Mohammedan books. Another issued a million of Hindu tracts at the expense of a Hindu prince. One hundred and three newspapers, mostly weeklies, are issued to abet paganism and Mohammedanism and to attack Christianity. 'The native presses,' says Joseph Cook, 'are exceedingly active. They throw off immense editions of books intended to defend paganism, and of heathen classics notoriously stained by passages of immoral tendency, sometimes of positive indecency."

-The Jewish World thinks that the most important question now before the Jewish people is instruction in the Jewish laws of health, for pupils in the communal schools. It says: "The one essential purpose for which these schools have been established is, we are told, the maintenance of Judaism; and yet the only specially Jewish instruction imparted in these institutions refer to that portion of Judaism which is its least consistent and persistent element. Jewish pupils are taught Hebrew, the rudiments of Jewish theology, the order of our prayers, the traditional meaning of our festivals and holidays—in fact, everything of a purely ritualistic and consequently a transient nature; but the physical laws which we have conserved in their integrity during nearly five thousand years, and to which we owe the bodily strength, and mental capacity, and the moral feeling, that have alone enabled us to maintain our religion against the onslaughts of fifty centuries of ignorance—these are almost totally neglected." It further says: "We may rest assured that if such instruction is not introduced, and our Jewish 'legalism' made to appeal to our intelligence, this 'legalism' will soon cease to be observed altogether. The result, however, can only be the disappearance of Judaism."