News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 15.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The Chinese Testament, revised by the Rev. Griffith John, has just been published, and the demand for parts of this version averages nearly 1,000 copies per day.

—Mr. Morse, grand rabbi of Avignon, France, announces a work on Judaism, taking up the history, morals, manners, and doctrines of the Hebrews. It is intended as an answer to the anti-Semites.

—The Independent states that “there are over eight hundred Congregational Churches alone without ministers, a very large portion of them so feeble that they can hardly expect to support a minister.”

—The largest Protestant church in the republic of Mexico is the Presbyterian Church in Zacatecas. It has more than 900 members. They have bought a fine Catholic church at great cost and are advancing rapidly.

—Some of the leading members of the Roman Catholic Church are taking steps to get the Pope to canonize Mary, Queen of Scots. The application will be based on the fact that Mary was the last of the Roman Catholic sovereigns of Scotland.

—Rev. Henry Loomis, of Japan, is authority for the statement that an English missionary who went to that country to teach the doctrine of a future probation has abandoned his faith entirely, and now lectures on educational and other secular topics.

—Catholic circles are greatly agitated at St. Louis, Mo., over the action of Archbishop Kenrick in ousting Father O’Leary from the diocese. The priest denies the authority of the archbishop, and the outcome is looked for with great interest and concern.

—The Hebrew Observer tells of a rabbi in New York, who, learning that the pupils of his Sabbath-school intended to present him with a Purim gift, sent a message to the children, that, as he possessed sufficient furniture, silverware, etc., he would prefer the cash.

—A correspondent of the California Christian Advocate makes the sensible suggestion that the next General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church so enlarge and vary the burial ritual that their ministers shall not have to say over a suicide, a rum-murdered sot, a wretch killed in a prize-ring, or a woman who dies from tight-lacing, “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, in his wise providence, to take out of the world the soul of the departed;” or over any unrepentant sinner, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.”