News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 31.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The total number of Sunday-schools of all “evangelical” denominations in New York City is 370; number of scholars, 103,823; teachers, 10,152.

—A nephew of the late Zulu King, Cetywayo, has spent six years in Stockholm, Sweden, in theological and other studies, and now returns to his own land and people to devote himself to mission work.

—Mgr. Straneiro, the papal ab-legate, who brought the baretta to Cardinal Gibbons, is now making a tour of the United States, and is being royally received, feasted, and flattered everywhere. There are a great many Catholic votes to be caught in this country.

—It is said that “Rev. Dr. Lathrop, pastor of the Baptist Church at Stamford, Conn., has offered his resignation, and a local authority says that the pastors of the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Congregational, Methodist, and Universalist Churches have requested him to recall it.”

—The Young Men’s Christian Association owns ninety buildings in the United States and Canada, and the net valuation of the association property is $5,040,178. There are 1,006 associations, 444 reading-rooms, 365 libraries containing in all 272,624 volumes. The annual current expenses of the 1,006 associations is over $800,000.

—The American Sunday-school Union offers its one-thousand-dollar-prize this year, for the best essay, containing between 60,000 and 100,000 words, on the subject of “The Christian Obligation of Property and Labor.” Unless the Union either obtains a better essay or makes a better selection, than it did at the time of offering this prize for an essay on the subject of the Obligation of the Christian Sabbath, it had better spend its $1,000 for something else.

—There are yet some people in the world who could profit by the experience of the editor of the Richmond Christian Advocate, who says: “It takes much heavenly-mindedness to have a manuscript returned by an editor, and receive it with a smile of sweetness. We have had that test more than once with our own productions of the pen; and while not having grown in grace with a stalwartness of piety worth bragging about, we have augmented our stock of common sense.”

—It is stated that “according to the lately-issued official report of the General of the Jesuits, this order is now 350 years old, has furnished 248 saints, 1,500 martyrs, 13 popes, 60 cardinals, 4,000 archbishops, 6,000 authors, and now numbers 2,500 missionaries.” We would amend that so as to read that the order has furnished the prison and the grave with 50,000,000 saints; the stake with 1,500 thousands of martyrs; and read emissaries for missionaries; and we are sure the report will be that much nearer the truth.

—A recent decree of the Sacred Tribunal of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition forbids Catholics to become members of orders affiliated to Free Masonry. The decree also inhibits the faithful from in any wise participating in or promoting the act of cremation, whether in leaving directions to that effect or in any other way. If the persons are only heretics, however, there will be no objection to their cremation, especially if they are alive. “The Sacred Tribunal of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition” has practiced that kind of cremation in a vast number of instances.