News and Notes | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 27, 1886

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 20

News and Notes.

RELIGIOUS.

—Over a million pounds is still spent yearly in pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina.

—“Speak well of the dead and the absent.” Yes; but why should the living and those who are present with us form an exception to the rule? Why not observe the injunction of the apostle, and “speak evil of no man”?—Methodist Recorder.

—The Christian Union says: “At a Presbyterian communion service in Dakota, the sermon was preached by a man who, about twenty years ago, danced the scalping dance where the city of Minneapolis now stands; one of the brethren was connected with the massacre of Stillwater, and a ruling elder was a son of the warrior Little Crow.”

—In 1795, the Catholic Church in Kentucky consisted of one priest and 1,500 people. In 1884, there were two bishops, 193 priests, 653 churches and stations, a Catholic population of 300,000, or one-eighth of that of the whole State; 57 colleges and academies and 100 free schools, which instruct 16,344 pupils, and nine asylums and four hospitals for the orphaned and infirm members.

—The Tennessee Baptist says: “Statistics show that there are 381 ordained preachers in Tennessee who are without pastorates, and the reason is that they are disqualified by the lack of education to be acceptable to the churches. They have not by application and hard study of God’s word and religious books improved themselves, and they cannot teach the churches. The preacher, young or old, who will not study will soon go ashore.”

—Prof. Austin Phelps, D. D., in an article in the Congregationalist, says: “There has sometimes been more joy at the parsonage and the vestry over one rich man who repented than over the opportunity to save the ninety and nine who did not repent.” And then follows this truth: “State churches commonly die of this moral pyaemia. History has not yet proved that, without reformatory awakenings from outside, and disciplinary dislodgments within, a church of Christ welded to the State can be saved from sinking into a Sybaritic civilization in which the crumpled rose leaf takes all spirit out of her for evangelistic enterprise.”

—The Golden Gate says: “While it is true that Spiritualists, as a rule, place but little stress upon the literal significance of religious holidays of any kind, save, perhaps, a general social interest in Christmas, there is nevertheless a significance attaching to Easter Sunday that should commend it to them as the day of days in all the year, not even second to that set apart for commemoration as the advent of modern Spiritualism into the world.” Straws show which way the wind blows. Such statements as the above show that the greatest deception of all time is fast increasing its power for deception by putting on the outward forms of religion. And since the belief that there is no death is prevalent in most of the modern churches, and the greater part of modern religion consists in the observance of forms, what difference will there be between Spiritualism and professed Protestant denominations, when the former shall have adopted the forms of the latter?