Religious Notes | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 25, 1883

Religious Notes.

—There are 135 Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia.

—Chaplain McCabe of the M. E. Church, has succeeded in raising a fund of $500,000 for church extension.

—A pastor in Syracuse, N. Y., reports that there is “considerable religious interest in the church and congregation.” Wonder how that happened.

—An “Anti-Gossip Society” has been started by some of the members of the M. E. Church of Attleboro, Mass. That is just what every church organization ought to be.

—The Christian at Work says that according to the latest statistics “there are just 1,190 D. P.'s. in the Presbyterian Church—that is 1,190 ministers who don't preach.”

—The native Christians of Madagascar have given, during the last ten years, one million dollars toward the spread of the gospel. Why don't these converted heathen send some of their money to America? It would doubtless be received gladly.

—It is estimated that the number of schools at present connected with the various foreign missions exceeds 12,000. The Bible has been translated into 236 languages and dialects, while its circulation during the past eighty years has reached an aggregate of 148,000,000 copies.

—The Moravian missionaries, who have been laboring for many years on the borders of Thibet, waiting for an opportunity to enter that country, have at last found one, and it is hoped that a mission will soon be established there. The Scriptures are being printed in the Thibetan language, and will soon be completed.

—Rev. George Hill, of Derby, says it is a remarkable fact, in view of some popular theories as to the origin of the human race, that no race has ever yet been found, in any part of the world, too degraded to be reached by Christian truth, or speaking a language so barbarous as to be incapable of receiving a translation of the Scriptures.

—There are now between three and four hundred Christian schools in China, containing over six thousand pupils. A Presbyterian lady missionary, mentioning this phase of Christian work, claims that, through the agency of these schools, “before many years, if the church be faithful to her trust, the whole Chinese Empire will be full of light.”

—The Bishop of Manchester, on the occasion of dedicating a church at Mossley, recently, said that unless the present internecine war in the Church of England were speedily terminated, the days of the church as a national institution were numbered. The very faith of the church was in jeopardy while its members were fighting about the clothes they should wear.

—A specimen of Catholic bigotry is given in the last Monitor. In a paragraph concerning the Milwaukee fire, it says, “Among the victims we notice the names of many employees who were doubtless Catholics, and we ask our readers to remember them in their prayers.” Since these prayers are furnished ready-made, we cannot see why they should be so chary of them.

—A D. D. of the Methodist Episcopal Church says in a Southern paper: “I have known hundreds of men and women who made no pretension to holiness, who had never experienced no ‘second blessing,’ who had found no ‘higher life,’ who, in fact, had never sought no higher life, who, in fact, were just as good in life and conversation as any ‘holiness’ people I ever saw, and who were a good deal more charitable and less censorious.”

—Two ladies, representatives of the Salvation Army in New York, have brought a suit for slander against the rector of a prominent Protestant church of that city. Neither of the ladies, however, has any personal grievance, but claims that the minister slandered the Army in a recent sermon. It is thought that the leaders of the Army instigated the suit. At any rate it is very evident that all the members of the Salvation Army are not well versed in the sermon on the mount.

—Mayor Edson, of New York, in his message to the Board of Aldermen, says of the Sunday Law: “I earnestly hope that great caution will be observed in dealing with this difficult and important question. For my part, I count the Christian Sunday, the weekly day of rest, among the greatest blessings which have come down to us—a blessing which we are bound to preserve to all our fellow-citizens, and most of all to the working classes and the poor. I am well aware of the difficulties that must be encountered in drawing the lines within which the law can be made justly to operate for the protection of society; yet I am convinced that custom alone cannot be relied upon among a population composed as ours is, but that in many instances individual inclinations must be restrained for the general good.”

—The Sunday-School Times has in the main Scriptural ideas in regard to giving. Here are a few words on the subject: “The Bible seems to be written with the idea in the minds of its inspired penmen that one-tenth of one's income, and one-seventh of one's time belong of right to God; and that the withholding of the tithe of one's increase, or of the Sabbath of one's week, is a robbery of God. This seems to have been settled by the common law of God on earth in the earliest ages of our race. It was the recognized rule long before the Mosaic economy was declared. Christianity privileges man to count all his possessions and all his time the Lord's, so as not to be particular about giving the one-tenth of the one, or the one-seventh of the other. But Christianity does not license man to give less into the Lord's treasury than the law of old—the Mosaic law, and the earlier patriarchal law—demanded. He is a good deal less than a Christian, and less than a Jew, who does not give one-tenth of his income and one-seventh of his time to the Lord nowadays. And this tithe-giving is apart from charities, apart from gifts about which one has any personal choice. It is the poll-tax of the citizen of God's earthly kingdom.”