News and Notes | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 12, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 43.

News and Notes.

RELIGIOUS.

—King Leopold of Belgium is spending $400,000 a year out of his own private purse in the work of civilizing and evangelizing Africa.

—It is proposed to open a training-school in Chicago to prepare persons for engaging in all kinds of missionary work, home and foreign.

—A Free Will Baptist missionary at Orissa, India, states that there has never been such a demand in Bengal for good reading matter in English as now.

—The Rev. Mr. Tennant died at Evansville, Ark., November 2, aged 115. He was the oldest gospel minister in the United States, and had preached for 90 years.

—When the American Board commenced its mission work among the Dakota Indians, they only numbered 25,000; now there are over 40,000 of them. Last year 117 new members were received into their churches.

—The vital statistics of Massachusetts for 1884, just made public, include some interesting facts about divorce. During the year, 614 divorces were granted; this is 41 less than in 1883, but 144 more than the yearly average for the past twenty years. Sixty-seven per cent. of the number were granted on complaint of the wife. The proportion of divorces to marriages is one divorce to 28.2 marriages.

—It has been the policy of the Mormons to extend their influence into other Territories around Utah; but their efforts in this direction have been checked. In Arizona, where large numbers of Mormons have settled, the laws have been maintained, and polygamists have had to suffer the penalty of their crime. In a single week, recently, the United States grand jury in Idaho found indictments against twenty-nine polygamists, including a bishop, who has been convicted. But the final, crushing blow for the Mormons has been the decision of the Chief Justice that the test-oath act, under which the recent convictions were secured, is constitutional.

—In Europe the Sunday agitation is reaching even those nations where Sunday has brought no cessation from labor. At the demand of the workingmen, Prince Bismarck has ordered an investigation into the question of Sunday labor throughout the German Empire. Austria has passed a law suspending various kinds of work on that day. In Italy men of influence are urging the necessity of Sunday rest from a hygienic, moral, and social point of view. “These and other similar movements,” says a leading Christian paper, “betoken the coming of the day when the name ‘Continental Sabbath’ will lose its obnoxious meaning.”

—The Synod of New York, which met in Troy, October 20 to 23, is described as an “intelligent, wide-awake, and admirably working body,” representing churches that have on their rolls 137,000 members. This influential body passed two resolutions bearing on the Sunday question; one “condemning in the strongest terms the making, selling, buying, or reading of Sunday newspapers;” and a second one as strongly condemning “Sunday excursion trains on our leading railroads, and calling upon all friends of the Christian Sabbath to discountenance the custom, and upon Christian railroad officers and directors to refuse to permit such trains.”

—The semi-centennial anniversary of Cardinal McCloskey’s ordination to the priesthood was celebrated in New York, January 31, 1884. On that occasion, Monsignor Quinn presented the following facts indicative of the rapid growth of Catholicism in this country: “Fifty years ago there were but six churches; now there are sixty. There were but twenty priests in the diocese; now there are three hundred and eighty. At that time there were in the whole United States only nine bishops; now there are fifty-nine. Then, there was but one arch-bishop; now, there are eleven, one of whom [Cardinal McCloskey] has been raised to the great senate of the universal church.”

—The Christian at Work has the following to say about the Salvation Army, which will apply equally well to the greater portion of modern revival effort: “The reiterated invitation, ‘Come to Jesus,’ has grown to be just a little suggestive of the ‘Lord! Lord!’ of the Bible hypocrite, and is taken by the sinner invited only as a hint to sing at the top of his voice, ‘I am so glad that Jesus loves me,’ which he is perfectly willing to do so long as nobody compels him to leave off lying and cheating, and drinking and swearing, the first two having been his business, and the last two his pleasure. . . . Isn’t there such a thing as dwelling too exclusively on the ‘all-cleansing blood of Jesus,’ leaving out of view the ensample of godliness given us by his life of good works? When the Salvation Army, in its zeal for saving souls, shall begin to wage direct war on the sins we see around us, and inculcate a practical religion that crops out in conscientiousness, truthfulness, honesty, and sobriety, then all lovers of law and order will bid the Salvation Army Godspeed.” We would say, When they begin to preach the law of God, then we can bid them Godspeed.