p. 110 | News and Notes

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

News and Notes.

RELIGIOUS.

—A Catholic convent for colored women in Baltimore, has thirty-two professed nuns, two novices, and one postulant.

—The son of Merle D’Aubigne the historian of the Reformation, who bears his father’s name, is engaged in missionary work in the Savoy.

—The American Bible Society has 200 colporters in its employ, and during the month of December sent out 11,610 volumes through their agency. This honored society was never more efficient than at present.

—At Odessa, a peasant belonging to the Bible-reading sect of the Stundists, has been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on a charge of blasphemy, in preaching against the image worship of the Russian Church.

—For the sake of obstructing the work of Christian missionaries and to prevent Moslem children from attending their schools, the Mohammedans have enacted a rule that no Moslem shall be considered his own master till he is twenty years of age.

—Hard times in New York State have affected the churches, and the economy of dispensing with church choirs has been necessitated. A favorite plan is the forming of young people’s choruses to lead the congregations in the hymns. “There is no great loss without some small gain.” In this case we would think the gain far greater than the loss. Let all the congregation sing who can. It has a much better effect than the performance of a half-score of young persons so highly trained (?) that no one could conjecture what they were struggling with. We should not be sorry if all such institutions were abolished.

—The Mormons are becoming desperate because of the justice recently meted out to them by the United States courts. John Taylor, president of the hierarchy, instructs the church in the following significant expressions: “If such persecution as we endure were heaped upon any other people, there would be dead bodies hanging from the poles in the streets.” Further: “I know some of the things that will befall the wicked and I am sorry for them.” He advises the brethren to “keep out of the enemy’s way as much as possible and to do no violence, but if closely pressed to take care of themselves as best they may.”

—Ingersoll finds a partial supporter in the Rev. Heber Newton, of New York. In a recent lecture on Ingersoll, he congratulates the world that while the noted infidel is doing some harm he is doing much good by way of destroying faith in “Calvinism.” The remedy, we think, is more to be dreaded than the disease, and the partial defender of Ingersoll more than the outspoken infidel. A clergyman wields a far greater influence in molding public opinion than an infidel, because the statements of the latter are always discounted by candid people. The sooner, therefore, skeptical men lay off their clerical robes and appear in their true light, the less harm they will do.