Religious Notes | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 9, 1882

Religious Notes.

—A Scotch Baptist Church has been organized in Patagonia.

—The Lutherans in this country built 141 churches last year, and 505 in the last four years.

—The average length of the pastorate in Congregational Churches in London, is nine and a half years.

—An apostate from the Greek Church in Strumnitza, Turkey, is to be tried for cursing the hat and beard of a Bishop.

—The leading Universalist paper asks, “From what source did St. Paul derive his Universalism?” We give it up.—Examiner.

—A preacher in New York announced as his subject on a recent Sunday, “How the Unknowable is Known to be Unknowable.”

—Count Campello, who was recently converted from Romanism, is about to start a paper in Rome, in the interest of Protestantism.

—Eight members of the present Senior Class in the Princeton Theological Seminary have announced their purpose to enter the foreign mission field.

—Mrs. Cooper, who recently left the Calvary Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, has joined the First Congregationalist Church, and will conduct a Bible class there.

—Professor Revel, of Florence, Italy, has published a new Italian version of the New Testament, in the preparation of which he has been engaged for ten years. The version now in use is about 200 years old.

—The International Sabbath [Sunday] Association has called a Conference to meet in Pittsburg, Pa., March 28, to continue three days. The best methods to adopt to secure the observance of Sunday will be discussed.

—The Roman Catholic Church of Rapperschwyl, in the canton of St. Gall, one of the most ancient ecclesiastical edifices in Switzerland, built by Rudolph of Hapsburg in the thirteenth century, has been burned down.

Rev. Dr. Howard Osgood has resigned his place on the Committee on Versions, of the American Bible Society, because the Society refuses to circulate Dr. Judson’s Burmese Version of the Bible. Their only objection to this version is that the Greek word baptizo is translated by a Burmese word meaning “immerse.”

—The Christian Union concludes that skepticism is on the wane, because the Scriptures are more eagerly read now than ever before. But of what use is it to read the Bible and then declare that it is insufficient to convert men and thoroughly furnish them unto all good works, and that a civil law must accomplish what the Bible cannot.

—According to Rev. Mr. Miln, the church of the future will be a think-as-you-please and do-as-you-please club, to which nobody is expected to belong,—a sort of cask without hoops or staves, bottom or top, and full of nothing in particular. A church that is all outside would be a destitution rather than an institution.—Christian at Work.

—In its issue of February 25, the Methodist reports 4,855 conversions in the Methodist Churches making the total number of conversions reported by it since the 1st of January, 23,398. And this from only a portion of the churches holding revivals. We hope that proper care will be taken in these revivals to have the names of the converted ones recorded, so that they may be known as such a year hence.

—The Unity Church in Chicago having informed Dr. Miln that his connection as pastor would cease when contract expires, which will be in three months, the Examiner pertinently asks what he will find to preach about during these three months, since he does not believe in the existence of God nor a future life. The Examiner must know that many ministers have the faculty of preaching about nothing.

—A secular paper, commenting on Mr. Miln’s denial of the existence of a personal God, asks the following pertinent questions: “Does the man Miln believe in himself as an organized personality? If so, could he, an effect, come from anything less than an organized personality as a cause? If there is no personal God, can there be a personal man? Can an effect be greater than its cause?” There are others besides Mr. Miln, who might consider these questions with profit.

—A Baptist Church in Missouri is divided on the subject of whether or not they shall have an organ. Some of the members think that “instrumental music” has no place in the service of a Christian Church. The Examiner has been asked what it thinks about it, and says: “It would of course be better to have no organ than to have a divided and alienated church, but in this part of the world organs and melodeons are about as common as choristers; and of the two the organ is the more harmless. It never frets, nor scolds, nor giggles, nor whispers to anybody around it, but is always sedate and well-behaved. How any reasonable man or woman should be opposed on principle to a church organ is beyond our comprehension. Nevertheless it is better to have no organ than to have a church-fight about it.”

—The following paragraph we find going the rounds of the religious press, and recommended as having a moral. Those to whom it applies, please take notice: ‘Colloquy: ‘Have you had a revival in your church?’ ‘No; our minister does not believe in them. We have not had a conversion in ten or twelve years.’ ‘Well,

what are you doing?’ ‘O, we are having the grandest fair you ever saw; the seats are all taken up in the church; we have a promenade concert every night, and a shooting gallery, and a grab bag, and a post-office, and the ladies dress up in all sorts of old-fashioned costumes. We expect to clear $1,200.’ ‘What is to be done with it?’ ‘It is to fit up a church parlor.’ And ‘so they wrap it up.’ (Micah 7:3.) ‘And what will ye do in the end thereof?’ The above is not a supposed, but a real case.’ A Methodist paper on this coast quotes this approvingly, and in the same column announces that the ladies of a certain M. E. Church will give in the church parlors, an Oriental Tea Party, to raise money for a pipe organ, and puffs a “bon-bon social” that was held in another church. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.”