News and Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1884

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—An Eastern religious journal says, "The records show that Oakland, Cal., is the most moral city on the Pacific Coast."

—It is said that the struggle against ritualism in the Church of England was less active last year than for the past ten years.

—The N. Y. Independent says, "The protection of the Sabbath [Sunday] rest by the Government has not been given up, and must not be."

—In Bavaria, where until recently all public worship except that of the Roman Catholic Church was strictly prohibited, the Methodists have been granted, by royal decree, the rights of a distinct church.

—The American Board has opened a new enterprise in Japan, to be known as the North Japan Mission. A peculiarity of this region is that all the good harbors are on the eastern or Pacific Ocean side of the island.

—Thomas Starr King (Unitarian) once said that "the difference between Universalists and Unitarians is this: The former believe that God is too good to damn them, and the latter believe themselves too good to be damned."

—There are several questions at issue in the Disciple Church, and being discussed by leading church journals, which bid fair to cause a division of the denomination. Among these issues are the organ and church festivals.

—A missionary contemporary states that a lady, on a recent country trip through Japan, sold 350 gospel pamphlets in less than two hours; and more were eagerly sought after. Those who hunger and thirst for the word of life certainly ought to have it.

—There is to be a National Council of Catholics at Baltimore, Nov. 9, 1884. The pope designed to appoint Archbishop Sepecci as presiding Apostolic Prelate; but on the strong urgency of the American bishops, he decided to appoint Archbishop Gibbons.

—In Stamboul, Turkey, the American Bible House and the British and Foreign Bible Society run a friendly rivalry in the same building. The business of both increases from year to year. The "miserable Government" is said to be the principal drawback to the spread of the gospel.

—Father McNally of St. Patrick's Church, West Oakland, has forbidden Catholic parents to send their children to the public schools, and enjoins them to patronize St. Joseph's Institute. As a consequence, over 200 children have been withdrawn from the public schools in that part of the city. In this city about 1,300 children attend the Catholic schools.

—The Christian at Work complains that the opening of the Bartholdi Art Loan Exhibition on Sunday is "a needless desecration of the Sabbath." It is hard to understand where the desecration of the Sabbath comes in. There is no violation of the fourth commandment, and that being the only existing divine law upon the subject, of course the day it sets apart is the only one that could be desecrated.