News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 17, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 16.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Four churches in Montreal have electric lights.

—A member of the Free-will Baptist Church in Bath, Maine, has been absent from Sunday-school but three times in twenty-two years.

—David Blair, a wealthy Scotsman, has joined the Benedictine Monks at Inverness, and made over to them an annual income of £6,000.

—It is said that there is not an Irish Catholic saloon-keeper in the city of St. Paul—all of them having been induced to quit the business.

—Over one-third of the citizens of Richmond, Va., are members of churches—a larger proportion, it is said, than in any city in the United States.

—The French Cathedral at Montreal is the largest church building on this continent. It is made of limestone, and 15,000 people have often been assembled under its roof.

—“Is Christ divided?” 1 Cor. 1:13. One would naturally suppose so from the report of receipts in the Missionary Review, which came from fifty denominations in the United States.

—A Presbyterian paper says the little Chinese church in San Francisco ranks among the very highest in the Presbyterian body, according to its ability, in work and gifts for benevolent purposes.

—The religious reformatory impulse now apparent in parts of Russia has come from the gospels themselves, and the movement is an earnest and increasing one. The doctrine preached is purely evangelical, but discards many of the restrictions made much of in Western Europe.—Ex.

—The Jewish Messenger says: “We dislike to use the terms ‘reform’ and ‘orthodox,’ because they denote ideas which are foreign to Judaism and tend to keep alive prejudice, ignorance, and intolerance among Jews toward Jews. The terms, besides, are very indefinite, and their meaning varies with every decade.”

—An exchange furnishes us with the fact that “fifty years ago thirty Baptist churches in Maryland declared themselves opposed to missions, while two alone took the stand in favor of them. The two increased to thousands, while the anti-mission churches diminished till they now only number seven or eight persons.”

—Eld. Hiram Munger, in the Herald of Life says: “Trying to unite free moral agency with the doctrine of election and decrees, amounts to about this: If you are elected you must have religion whether you want it or not; if you want it you can’t get it; if you get it you don’t know it; if you know it you haven’t got it; if you have it you can’t lose it; if you lose it you never had it.”

—The recent Mormon Conference at Salt Lake appointed eighty-eight missionaries, for all parts of the world, to preach the Mormon gospel. They were exhorted to go without purse or scrip, but most of them engaged passage in palace cars. Humble demeanor used to be the Mormon boast; but, like other sects, numbers and wealth is making the church servants vain and arrogant.

—The Occident says: “The Bible ideas of work are brought before us, by contrast, when we see crowds of speculators that fill California and Montgomery streets day after day. They are idlers, to say the least, wanting to get rich without labor. They weave webs, like spiders, in order that they may catch unwary flies and feed upon them, but they add nothing to the real wealth of the world—they do nothing to promote the interests of humanity.”

—The promoters of the Sunday observance movement in Italy seem to be meeting with success. At Alessandria, in Piedmont, as the People’s Gazette of Torino informs us, there had been gathered a numerous assemblage of laborers, men of business, clerks, and artisans favorable to the object, for the purpose of setting on foot better means of recognizing the day, at which meeting resolutions for the measure were unanimously adopted.

—“It is good cause for alarm among Congregationalists when the ‘Old South’ abandons orthodoxy; when Andover Theological Seminary avows a ‘new departure’; when Prof. Ladd, of Yale College, publishes a work the effect of which, so far as it goes, is to destroy all confidence in the Scriptures; and when Dr. McLane, late of Steubenville, is called to one of the leading Congregational churches of New Haven, though repudiating altogether the orthodox view of the atonement.”—Presbyterian Banner.

—A sensation has been created by the escape of Miss Mary Magdelen Windsor, from an Annapolis, Md., convent, and her threats to expose the doings of the institution. She had been two years in the convent. On the night of January 13 last she escaped in the full dress of the sisterhood and sought refuge at her sister's house in Baltimore, where she now is. Miss Windsor says she became disgusted at the conduct of the sisters at the convent, and she proposes to reveal all. She says she will give names and prove all she says. She alleges that threats have been made to kill her if she tells what she knows; yet, notwithstanding this, she will speak out freely, as she says she wishes to warn people against the convent. She says she could not remain and witness the scandalous conduct of the sisters.