Religious Miscellany by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1875

Religious Miscellany.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

—Brigham Young has been sick for the last two weeks, and is still unable to receive visitors. His death, which cannot be far off, must evidently open the way for divisions and sects among the Salt Lake Mormons, as there is no one who has the ability and the confidence of the people enough to take his place. The Josephites are hoping to reap a rich harvest to their party when that occurs. Joseph Smith, Jr., now claims to be a prophet, the successor of his father.

—The fourth meeting of the Woman's Baptist Missionary Society was held in Boston, April 21. From the report it appears that fifteen missionaries are supported by the Society, of whom five are among the Burmese, six among the Karens, three among the Eurasians, and one among the Chinese. In addition to these, sixteen Bible-women are sustained by its funds. Seventeen schools, containing nine hundred and eighty pupils, are under the care of these missionaries. The treasurer's report showed the receipts to be $30,241,29, and the expenditures $27,700, 07. It is a little singular that the great tract societies of London and America owe their existence to infidels. They founded a tract society during the French Revolution, and kept it up long after its atrocities ceased. Christians saw the power of this instrumentality; seized it; and hurled it back with power on the enemy.

—The receipts of the Baptist Home Mission Society the past year for its missionary operations including its educational work among the Freedmen was $199,048.57

—Under the head of "Denominational Unrest," the Examiner says, "The ease with which ministers run from one denomination into another is one of the marked things of the day. The old moorings are giving away and thinking men are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the present state of the church and religion.

—The Seventh-day-Advents are publishing seven different papers and journals, one in Danish, one in the Swedish language, and the rest in English. One of these, the Review and Herald, is regularly sent to subscribers in the following countries outside of their own land:—

China, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South America, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland, New South Wales, and Italy.

FOREIGN.

—It is stated that the Jesuits are making great efforts to widen their sphere of action in Asia Minor, by founding establishments, schools, and churches. At Beyrout alone the order has acquired no less than twenty sites, which are about to be built upon.

—Pope Pius, in a letter to a professor in the Louvain University, strongly censures the wickedness of those persons "boastfully styling themselves Catholics who obstinately adhere to the liberty of conscience, liberty of creed, the freedom of the press, and similiar kinds of liberty which the church has always condemned." This is the way that church is in favor of freedom!

—There is one part of the world to which, until within a few years, the Papacy could point as "all its own." That favored region was the once powerful little kingdom of Portugal. The abominations of Protestant heresy had gained no foothold there. The Church was supreme. Priestly authority was unquestioned. Church and State linked hands in a mutual endeavor to ward off the least beginnings of Protestant error. By stern measures the Church of Rome managed to keep the population of the kingdom loyal to itself, and the mass of the people as dirty, unlettered, and superstitious as even the infallible Pius could wish them to be. But a few years since the Protestants managed to obtain a foothold in Lisbon and Oporto. They are now slowly but steadily gaining ground. Thus the power of the papacy is waning everywhere. May its end soon come.

D. M. C.