News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 12.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Pere Hyacinthe (Loyson) is sojourning in San Francisco and vicinity.

—Rev. George F. Pentecost has gone to Europe to join in labor with Mr. Moody.

—It is estimated that the children and teachers in the Sunday-schools throughout the world number 15,000,000.

—The managers of a "charity ball" in Philadelphia sent a check for $2,700 to the Presbyterian Hospital. At last accounts the question as to whether it shall be accepted had not been settled.

—The following religious or church item we copy from the Christian at Work: "Among the prizes raffled for at the Roman Catholic fair in Twenty-third Street, last week, was a cask of ale."

—The older churches of Amoy, China, in connection with the London Missionary Society, have begun missionary operations on their own account, showing that they have received the true spirit of the gospel.

—The Governor-General of Canada takes oath that he will permit no foreign potentate to exercise jurisdiction in Canada, and the Catholics are rebelling against it. Which clearly shows the intentions of Catholicism.

—There is less liberty in Turkey for Protestant missions than formerly. The Sultan seems embittered against other nations, and is also placing greater restrictions than formerly upon his subjects who profess the Armenian or Nestorian faith.

—Ten new churches, says the San Francisco Monitor, have been dedicated in this Archdiocese during 1883; thirteen priests have been added to the number of clergy, and three new academies have been opened. The Catholic population has increased about 15,000.

—The Catholic colonization in the United States is going forward with wonderful rapidity. An Italian colony "in the interior" is shortly to be organized, and committees are to be formed at Naples, Genoa, New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans, to assist poor immigrants. The Archbishop of Naples has already established a committee.

—The Presbyterian Church in Springfield, N. J., has been nine years without a pastor, only for the reason that the members can never agree in their choice. They have but two candidates before them at present, but as they are about equally divided over them, there is good prospect of a longer vacancy. What an example such a church sets to the world, of Christian unity!

—A bill has been presented in the New York Legislature which the Executive Committee of the Evangelical Alliance has taken steps to defeat. The bill is "To establish the freedom of public worship in the charitable institutions of the State," and it is claimed that it is so framed that the institutions will be subject entirely to the Catholic priesthood. So Rome is reaching out to control this country.

—A pastor of a leading church in Nebraska is reported to have said, in regard to the liquor question: "No human enactment should be made contrary to divine law." Then in the same paper which contains this language, and much more to the same effect, is the notice of a marriage, solemnized by the pastor, and it is authoritatively stated that the bride had been twice divorced, both her previous husbands being still alive.

—Rev. Henry Dana Ward died in Philadelphia, Feb. 29, of paralysis. He was aged 86 years, and although a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he was a strong adventist, even ante-dating Wm. Miller in preaching the near approach of the returning Lord. He published in the N. Y. Journal of Commerce of Nov. 13, 1833, a description of the "falling stars" phenomenon, which had occurred but two days previous, and claimed it as a fulfillment of Matt. 24:29.

—Professor Huxley, the English agnostic scientist, takes occasion in his own magazine to say that the "bosh" of orthodoxy is much less offensive to him than the "bosh" of heterodoxy. Whereupon Mr. Spurgeon, in his magazine, draws attention to the estimate which scientists put upon "liberal" Christians who attempt to adapt their creed to the changing creeds of science, and suggests that they do not seem to gain more respect from scientists than do those who hold to their Christian belief without daily trying to bring it into harmony with the "latest conclusions of science."

—The spiritualistic medium will endure more exposure and still retain some vitality than any other creature in the animal kingdom. The chief spiritualists in this city, who draw a good revenue from the credulity of their dupes, have been exposed again and again; their "materializations" have been shown to be the grossest frauds. Yet after each disaster they recuperate in a few weeks and soon gather around them the same old coterie of people whose faith would move mountains. A notorious female medium of this city, who has survived repeated exposures here, has just had her devices laid bare in Washington, but we have an abiding faith that she will be heard from again in a few months. Lucrative imposture is too good a business to be dropped for any small check like the ridicule of the unbelievers or the light of a gas-jet on a dark and crooked seance.

—S. F. Chronicle. The reason why a certain class of people are so easily deluded by impostors is given in 2 Thess. 2:7-12.