News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 13, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 31.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The Wesleyans have 6,000 communicants and 20,000 adherents in Ceylon.

—Monsignore Capel places the number of Catholics in this country at 8,000,000.

—General Booth thinks that his Salvation Army will number 20,000,000 in 1900.

—Mohammedan citizens of London are making arrangements to build a mosque in that city.

—The city mission of Berlin circulates no less than 75,000 printed sermons on Sunday morning.

—The smallest salary a minister in the Presbyterian Church of Australia is permitted to receive is $1,500.

—The Austrian Government has decided to reconsider the laws recently made, forbidding Sunday labor in Vienna.

—The Religious Tract Society, of England, has translated and published “Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress” in seventy languages.

—The British and Foreign Bible Society determined last year to issue an edition of the New Testament at two cents a copy. In nine months 950,000 copies were sold.

—A revised version of the Scriptures in French is now in course of publication at Neuchatel. The work is under the direction of a committee presided over by Professor Godet, the eminent commentator.

—In the two States of Vermont and New Hampshire the loss to the Free Will Baptist denomination since 1844 has been 94 churches, 63 ministers, and 6,529 communicants, being one-third of its total strength.

—The New York Tribune states that among the nineteen petitioners for a liquor store opposite St. Paul’s Lutheran church at Sixth Avenue and Fifteenth Street, were several members of the church, the sexton, and two deacons.

—The Christian at Work says that at the funeral of the late Dr. Irenaeus Prime, “the journalistic, medical, legal, mercantile, and religious professions were largely represented.” We did not suppose it was as bad as that. We thought that at least a few of the religious profession might be found among doctors, lawyers, journalists, and merchants.

—A dispatch from London says: “Church and State will be the leading question at the coming election, both the church and the clergy, by their conduct, almost daily helping the Radical cry of ‘Divorce Church and State!’ The newspapers continue to bring charges against the clergy for drunkenness and loose morals on one hand, and bigotry and clerical oppression on the other.”

—The editor of a religious paper in a town a few miles from Oakland is attending meetings in Washington Territory, and writes his editorials from there. In a recent one we find the following: “As our wagon is waiting, we close this, though we are full of the subject, and also of a chicken dinner, abundantly provided by Mrs. —.” Perhaps that pastor thinks that he can properly “feed the flock” by giving them an account of what he has had to eat.

—A London paper says that at a late meeting of the St. Luke’s vestry, the accounts for the expenses in connection with the recent election of vestrymen were presented. These included £26 for refreshments during the day. One member of the vestry moved to reduce this sum by one-half. He protested against the great amount of drinking that went on, and wanted to know why the poor-rates should be burdened with bills for vestrymen’s beer. His fellow-vestrymen treated this impertinent question with silent contempt, and as his amendment found no seconder, the subject dropped.

—The Hebrew Journal says, “It is, after all, not our human conception of God, nor the manner in which we worship him, but the consciousness that there is a God, and that we depend on his guidance and providence, that constitutes the essence of religion; and herein every worshiper of divinity is alike, no matter as to the form of worship. Have not we all one Father? Has not one God created us?” The Independent quotes this with approval, and says that the Journal “is giving us all lessons in charity.” So, then, “charity,” in the modern religious sense, is to admit that Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Mohammedans, and deists are equally correct. How long will it be before the mantle of “charity” is thrown over the devils? We understand that they also have a clear consciousness that there is one God.