Religious Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 19, 1883

Religious Notes.

By Editor

There are no fewer than one hundred and eighty denominations or sects in England.

Seven Chinamen were admitted to membership in the First Presbyterian Church, at Los Angeles, last week.

E. P. Hammond is assisting Mr. Talmage in a revival effort in Brooklyn. Three services are held each day.

Rev. Dr. B. F. Cocker, of Michigan University, the author of valuable works on moral philosophy, is dead.

According to Rev. Dr. Robinson, of Providence, the Baptists have 2,350,000 communicants, of whom two-thirds are in the Southern States.

In the Episcopal Church of Dent, Yorkshire, two shelves are filled every Sunday with loaves for the poor, which they carry away after the service.

In the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church it was recommended that the advocacy of temperance be kept from entailing an alliance with woman suffrage and other subjects.

It has been but a little over a year since the Metropolitan Tabernacle Temperance Society was formed in Mr. Spurgeon's church, London. In that time more than seventeen thousand pledges have been taken there.

We learn from an exchange that a grand jury in St. Louis has recommended the prosecution of church societies which conduct raffles at their fairs and entertainments. Good; church gamblers should be prosecuted the same as any other.

There are thirty Chinese in Springfield, O., and half of them attend the Presbyterian Sunday-school. The reason why the rest do not attend is that they have to guard their laundries, since the "Christians" rob them whenever they have opportunity. Of course the Chinese do not consider that all whites are not Christians, but how can they be blamed for thinking that they are, when it is constantly asserted that this is "a Christian nation"?

The Christian at Work criticises the Missionary Review for speaking of the "ratio of Christianity to Catholicism and other religions," and says, "Isn't Catholicism one phase of Christianity?" Our reply would be that it is a perverted form of Christianity, and therefore not Christianity at all. Christianity is the religion in which Christ is the central figure. Catholicism is a form of religion in which the virgin Mary is the central figure. Mariolatry is not Christianity by any means.

One hundred and thirty-one leading clergymen, lawyers, physicians, merchants, and manufacturers, of Hartford, Conn., have signed a request to the news dealers to refrain from purchasing and selling the Police Gazette, Police News, and similar papers, believing that by so doing they will promote morality. We fear that the dealers in such trash, like dealers in whisky, care more for promoting their own pecuniary interests than for promoting religion and virtue. They cannot appreciate such an appeal.

Mr. Spurgeon, in the last number of his magazine, writes thus concerning the Salvation Army: "It is time that somebody spoke, now that the attempt is made to make men religious by turning all religion into a game of soldiers. Because they would not hinder anything that promised well, Christian men have borne with much that grieved them, but there is a point beyond which long-suffering charity cannot go. This point is nearly reached; even the most ultra-tolerant must feel that hope has been disappointed, and fear now takes its place."

The Ministerial Union of San Francisco at a recent meeting resolved, "That, as pastors, we henceforth use our influence against placing a notice of preaching service in the Sunday issue of our papers." It was also wisely resolved not to advertise special themes, because the special theme theory at its best "is a direct fostering of a system of dillettantism in church attendance—a bidding for itching ears—and the creation of a class of vain and useless rounders in the churches," and at its worst, "inevitably degenerates into the grossly sensational, the ludicrous, and even the sacrilegious, and so degrades the church, the pulpit, and even if that were possible, the gospel itself."

The Mennonites of Lancaster, Pa., recently supplied the place of their deceased pastor according to their usual custom, which is as follows: On the day for the selection, all the candidates named met with the congregation in the church. As many books were placed in a row as there were candidates. One of these books contained a slip of paper, and the candidate drawing the book containing the slip was the selected preacher. We cannot see why this plan was not as good as though each one had made his best speech to prove himself better than all the rest. It is efficient anyway, for it is sure to result in the selection of a pastor, a result which is not always obtained by the ordinary plan of candidating.

The Christian Union rejoices that Mr. Newton's attack on the Bible has been published, and is being read by all classes. It says: "Religion's greatest enemy is indifference. Anything that attracts public or popular attention to the Bible is to be welcomed, though it be crude criticism, or still cruder conceptions of its origin, its authorship, and its authority." We most emphatically differ. Religion is not in such straits that it needs any clap-trap performances to call attention to it. True religion will make itself felt. But while it does not greatly fear attacks from without, it does not covet fightings within. Ingersoll, and all of his class, with their bold blasphemies, cannot do the harm that one man can do, who attacks the foundations of Christianity while professing to be a minister of the gospel. Are there not enough infidels outside the church to call attention to the Bible, that its ordained expounders must do their work? It was not thus that our Saviour taught his disciples to let their light shine.