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Religious Miscellany

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 5, 1875

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 1, No. 39.

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Religious Miscellany.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

-Two hundred Jesuit priests, driven out of Germany, are expected in Quincy, Ill., shortly.
-There are 721 Young Men's Christian Associations in the United States and the British Provinces.
-The law subjecting priests and divinity students to military service has passed the Italian Senate.
-The total membership of the United Presbyterian church of Scotland is 187,761. Its income last year was $1,730,000.
-There are 21,000 Protestant converts in China, and in India there are more than twelve times that number.
-Six converts to the true Sabbath were baptized, June 27, at Neuchatel. Eld. Andrews is much encouraged in his work.—Sabbath Memorial.
-It is estimated that the pope's income from 1861 to the present time has not been less than $100,000,000, and the humble successor of Peter, lives on this small income!
-It has been decided in England that it is unlawful for a clergyman of the Church of England to take part in any religious service other than that of that church, or in any place licensed for dissenting worship.
-A sum amounting to between £6,000 and £7,000 has been presented to Cardinal Manning on behalf of the leading Roman Catholics in England, as a congratulatory testimonial on his recent elevation to the Sacred College.
GENTILE JEWS.—"Mohal" David Klein, of New York, says he has recently performed the rite of circumcision on 38 Christian adults who have desired to be admitted to membership in the synagogue. But a rich bride was the cause of each of these conversions.
-There are in the cities of Buenos Ayres and Montevideo sixteen Protestant places of worship, in twelve of which the English language is used and Spanish in the remainder. More than fifty thousand copies of the Bible in Spanish have been circulated in South America in late years.
-Popular ministers in our large cities now receive from $5,000 to $15,000 per year. For this they preach one and sometimes two sermons per week, each from fifteen to forty minutes long. Then they have a summer vacation of six weeks or more with all expenses paid. "Verily they have their reward."
-Of church choirs the Examiner and Chronicle says:— "It looks a little odd to see solo performers who lead the worship of God in fashionable churches Sunday mornings, making the chief attractions of their Sunday night [theatrical] entertainments."
-The amount of church property exempt from taxation in Erie County, N. Y., alone exceeds in valuation the sum of $4,000,000, and in the United States the value of such property so exempt reaches the enormous sum of $650,000,000. The probability is that laws will soon be passed to tax this church property.
-The Old Catholic movement in Germany, though aided by the government does not make much progress. The reason is plain. There is not enough of reform in it to commend it to earnest, progressive men. Those who accept so much of Roman dogmatism can accept more. Those who reject infallibility are inclined to reject the system entire, and find supply for their religious desire in the Protestant denominations.
-Companies of banished German Jesuits arrive at intervals in New York and scatter in various directions. Several Franciscan priests, about fifty students, and a few nuns, landed in New York a few days since, some going to Cleveland, others to Cincinnati and Buffalo, these three cities apparently being the centers of the order. The movement southward proceeds quietly, and no doubt it is the policy of the Catholic Church to gain a hold in that direction, especially among the freedmen, with as little display as possible.
-The attitude of the nations toward the Roman church is thus described by the New York Tablet, a Catholic paper:— "Again she finds herself in the midst of a hot and almost world-wide persecution. After a long era of her benificent supremacy, men have grown weary of her gentle yoke. They have even turned to hate her to whom they owe civilization, liberty, mental and moral enlightenment—whatever, in short, they possess. And with an ingratitude not less than diabolic, they are bent on crushing out of existence their benefactor."
-The Russian government has appointed a commission to report on the advisability of abolishing many of the church holidays, and other reforms are in contemplation. The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Globe says:— "Plans are being prepared for increasing the pay of the rural priests, and for giving them a better education than they receive now, and the Holy Synod promises to publish the Old Testament, which it is now translating into Russian, in the course of a few months. One of Lord Radstock's converts, a millionaire of the name of Pashkoff, distributes 1,000 copies of the New Testament among the moujiks every month."
-In Massachusetts, where the Baptists were once so severely persecuted, they are now raising a centenary fund of $350,000. In connection with this fact the Post makes a note of the fact that in Cambridge, where the first President of Harvard College, the Rev. Henry Dunster, who was inaugurated in 1640, was persuaded in 1654 to resign his office on account of his having adopted the principles of the Baptists, there is now a very handsome and costly church of solid granite; and several prominent Massachusetts Congregationalist churches, whose ministers have been educated at Cambridge, have consented to allow baptism by immersion to all who wish to receive it in that form.
D. M. C.