News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 15, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 39.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—There are now over eight hundred missionaries in China.

—A Baptist church in Florida has expelled all its members whose names have appeared on petitions for liquor licenses.

—It is understood that of the 581 liberal candidates for seats in the British Parliament, 462 favor church disestablishment.

—Berlin has over one million adherents to the evangelical faith, and yet has but thirty-eight churches and thirteen chapels, with a combined seating capacity of less than 50,000.

—The dedication exercises of the first Hebrew Christian Church founded in America, began on Sunday, the 11th inst., and will continue one week. The church is located in St. Mark's Place, between Second and Third Avenues, New York City.

—The Presbyterian Board of Missions entered Mexico thirteen years ago. It now reports six thousand church members, fourteen ordained native ministers, and thirteen licentiates. It has one Presbytery organized, and has commenced the work of building a theological school.

—A report has reached the United States minister at Lisbon that fifty Methodist missionaries from this country, men, women, and children, under the care of a bishop, recently landed on the west coast of Africa in an utterly destitute condition, and became at once a charge on the local government.

—On the third anniversary of the organization of the Salvation Army in Canada, over 4,000 members assembled in Toronto. While there, certain notables performed the ceremony of laying the cornerstone of the new barracks which is to be the headquarters for the army in the Dominion. The building is to cost about $32,000.

—The Independent says that the Mormons "may be very pious; but they certainly do not show themselves at all chivalrous. It was shameful enough when they fled and hid by the hundred, leaving 'wives' and children to shift for themselves; but how much more base when polygamists keep their own mouths shut before the jury, and suffer women to go to jail for contempt for refusing to give evidence against them. But not less than half a dozen have thus sacrificed the mothers of their children to save themselves."

—The "Most Reverend Cornelius O'Brien, D. D., Archbishop of Halifax," has written and published a novel, entitled "After Many Years," which is doubtless intended to promote the interests of the Roman Catholic Church. What those interests are is indicated by the following frank statement which the Independent quotes from the 26th page of the book: "We can never admit that ignorance of reading and writing is dangerous to society. We rather believe that one of the natural causes which will be at work in bringing about the final doom of nations will be that which is now called public education." It ought to be evident to discerning persons that what is for the interest of the Catholic Church is not for the good of the people.