News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 2, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 14.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—General Booth reports the income of the Salvation Army to be $1,600,000.

—The First Baptist Church, Albany, N. Y., has a meeting-house and lot that cost $100,000.

—The Spiritualists of San Francisco have organized under the name of the First Spiritual Church.

—The Norwegian Lutherans, in the United States, number 140,000, and they have sixteen church papers.

—The Baptist Missionary Union needs $190,000 in the balance of this financial year, so as to show no debt.

—Rev. T. L. Cuyler has completed the twenty-fifth year of his pastorate of the Lafayette Avenue church, Brooklyn, N. Y.

—The Protestant population of Germany has increased by 500,000 in the last ten years, but only two new churches have been built.

—The first German Baptist Church in this country was organized in Newark, N. J., in 1842. There are now 139 German Baptist Churches, with a membership of 12,000.

—Mr. Wm. Bucknell has presented to the Philadelphia Episcopal City Mission his beautiful residence at Chestnut Hill, valued at $75,000, for a home for consumptives.

—A practical theological seminary has been started in Norway to prepare missionaries to send with their emigrants. For this purpose suitable buildings are being erected in Christiana.

—The Congregational News, of Nebraska, publishes a list of all the Congregational Churches in the state, and sets a black spot opposite each one that does not contribute to any of the benevolent societies of church work.

—Some Hebrew converts, six males and one female, were recently baptized at St. Paul's Church, Huggerstone, London, by the Rev. M. Rosenthal, who has baptized some one hundred and forty during the last five years.

—The Presbyterian Church has at present fifteen Indian missions among the following tribes: Senecas, Chippewas, Omahas, Creeks, Dakotas, Seminoles, and Nez Perces. These missions have an aggregate of 1,256 communicants. They also have ten schools, with an aggregate of 389 scholars.

—The Moravians have now 114 mission stations, 284 European missionaries, 41 natives, and 1,575 assistants, half of whom are British subjects; 79,021 members, 16,590 scholars in 211 day schools, and 13,604 in 89 Sunday-schools. Some of these missionaries have become slaves to teach slaves.

—In the church of the United Brethren, two parties have been developed, and a contest is going on over the clause in the Discipline which declares that no member shall belong to a secret society. One pastor announces in the Telescope that he will no longer enforce the rule, and if this be treason the church can make the most of it.

—The Presbyterian Church in Wales, according to the Freeman, has made for itself an unenviable name for contracting debts. While the church communicants number only about 125,000, the chapel debts amount to about $12,500 on an average for each member. In fifty-one churches the debts average from $50 to $100 per member, and there are twenty more where the average ranges from $100 to $300.

—A London paper says: "There are, in the Church of England, more than one thousand clergymen members of the notorious Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, the chief objects of which are the propagation of the doctrine of the mass and the real presence, together with fasting, communion, prayers for the dead, the reserved sacrament, and the reunion of the church of England with the church of Rome."

—The number of Congregational Churches which gave over $10,000 each for benevolence during the past year is twenty-six, and their aggregate gifts amounted to $483,530. Fifteen of the number are in New England, and gave in the aggregate $261,368; four are in New York City and Brooklyn, and gave $66,559; seven are in the West, and gave $155,608. The largest amount was given by Plymouth Church, of Minneapolis, which gave $43,108; the second largest amount was by the First Church of New York City, which gave $26,974; and the third, the Pilgrim Church, of St. Louis, giving $24,814.