Religious Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 31, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 21.

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Religious Notes.

By Editor

—The London Missionary Society owns five mission ships.

—The income of the Church of England is put at $22,625,000.

—In the Philadelphia Conference of the M. E. Church there are 45,334 full communicants.

—The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland had a net increase during the past year of nearly 1,800.

—The London Freeman says that the native Christians of Madagascar have given more than a million dollars during the past ten years for the spread of the gospel.

—The Presbytery of the Edinburgh United Presbyterians passed a resolution at its last session urging the ministers within its bounds to aim sedulously at extempore preaching.

—The Council of the Canton of Neufchatel, Switzerland, has voted to continue its restrictions on the meetings of the Salvation Army, and to interdict them altogether if the rules are violated.

—The General Baptist Convention, lately in session in Oakland, adopted a resolution recommending that the churches use unfermented wine in the solemnization of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

—The Congregationalist says it is an unfortunate feature of the weekly offering system in the churches that it seems to give the Secretaries of the benevolent societies a less free access to some of the pulpits than heretofore.

—The Christian at Work is authority for the statement that in Miles City, Montana, the Methodists have placed contribution-boxes in the drinking-saloons, so that the patrons may drop in a coin or two whenever they drink. Of course the good people couldn’t think of doing anything against those upon whom they partially depend for their support, so the saloons have a fine prospect before them.

—A Sacramento clergyman advises his flock to labor for the legal protection of Sunday by a new law. He says: “We should give ourselves and the public no rest until we have a new Sunday Law;” and we “must fight the battle up and out again, till the civil Sabbath is a recognized law of the State of California.” And he further advises that the politicians through whose influence the Sunday Law was abolished, should be given to understand “that they are no more needed in official positions.” That’s the way to do it. Let that be the rule of action for a while, and the number of converts to the “foundation of our holy religion” will increase rapidly.

—Geo. O. Barnes, the “Mountain Evangelist,” is eccentric and sensational, but he has some good sense. Speaking of the creation of the world, and the origin of life, he said: “We may bother about the mystery for ages and never will find it out. Your little head and mine cannot contain it, and that is the reason God did not give us the information. If it was of the size to fit into your head and mine God would not refuse to give it. He gives us everything that he can give us; but he don’t want an idea put into your head that would burst it open like a bombshell. So the good God in tender mercy withholds from us what we cannot contain.” If more people were willing to admit that they don’t know everything, there would be much less of “science, falsely so-called.”

—A writer of Washington, speaking of the theory of evolution, and its effect on missionary effort, says: “It seems that this theology of conjecture, as it has appeared among our orthodox churches, has not had time to give us a specimen of the kind of missionary heroes it can raise up. We can only turn to the exploits of the single missionary sent by our Unitarian brethren to India, and to the fact that our Universalist brethren seem to think the heathen well taken care of if left to themselves. These denominations are consistent with their views of truth. . . . This is certainly a fact, that whatever has been done for the heathen in the way of bringing them to Christ, has been done by those who believed, with St. Paul that even the heathen are without excuse, because they do not follow the light they have.”