News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 30.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The Rotterdam Missionary Society in East Java reports 4,000 church-members.

—Monsignore Capel does not favor the founding of a Catholic university in the United States.

—Rev. Irenaeus Prime, D. D., editor of the New York Observer, died, July 19, aged seventy-three. For over forty-five years he was connected with the Observer, and during that time his letters over the signature “Irenaeus,” were read with interest and profit by many thousands in both hemispheres, as they were copied extensively by all religious journals.

—The Christian Standard says: “We have heard of sneezing parties, and kissing parties, and gambling parties, with a view to raise money for church purposes. Indeed, there is scarcely any innocent pastime or mischievous folly that has not been resorted to with a view to supply churches with money; and the church is thus on its knees in base submission to an unbelieving world, praying for help, much oftener, we fear, than on its knees before God seeking help and guidance.”

—A Congregational council in New Haven, Conn., recently licensed a young man to the ministry, who, in his examination, announced that he did not believe in the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he did not pray to Christ, and that he would not direct a sinner to Christ as his Saviour. Yet I presume we should be accused of uncharitableness if we should say that that young preacher is not a Christian, or should express doubts as to the religious perceptions of that council. The statement of the young man’s unbelief is given by the Advance (Congregationalist).

—This from the Churchman: “The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher recently declared that the baptism of an infant can have no possible effect whatsoever upon the child. . . . We do not care to discuss Mr. Beecher’s general views concerning sin. We only have this one question to ask: Did the Lord command his disciples through all time to observe a perfectly useless ceremony?” Sure enough, did he? If the Lord had commanded his disciples to “baptize” infants there would be some use in it; but if the Churchman knew the Bible as thoroughly as it does the Prayer Book, it would know that he never gave any such commandment.