News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1886

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Three young men from Turkey are students in the Andover Theological Seminary.

—The cost of the cathedral erected at Garden City, L. I., by the widow of A. T. Stewart, is estimated at $1,500,000.

—The Church of England Temperance Society now has 700,000 members, and large numbers who have been in favor of the moderate use of stimulants are taking the total-abstinence pledge.

—Several of the infidel organs of free-thought in France have disappeared, while those devoted to the advocacy of evangelical truth have greatly multiplied. This indicates improvement in French public opinion.

—Plans have been forwarded from Chicago for the new Cathedral about to be erected in San Francisco by Archbishop Riordan. The cathedral will cost $250,000, and will be the finest church edifice on the Pacific Coast.

—According to the Indian Witness, the headmaster of a Government school in India has so far disregarded the religious restrictions placed upon such schools by the Government as to permit a missionary to address the scholars on the ten commandments and on Christ as the end of the law. We are glad that missionaries in India are old-fashioned enough to believe in, and preach, the decalogue.

—In Germany, the Sunday question is attracting a great deal of attention. "A conference of soap-boilers, leather-dressers, molders, porcelain and glass makers, cigar makers, engravers, and butchers, was recently held in Berlin under the auspices of the Government, and a resolution adopted condemning Sunday work." Bismarck opposes the movement; but the friends of Sunday observance have succeeded in getting the matter referred to a special commission, which is "collecting information from all parts of the German Empire, as to the nature, extent, and incidence of Sunday labor."

—The Salvation Army is in trouble. General Booth describes the year 1884-5 as having been "one protracted, heavy struggle with persecutions, afflictions, and trials of every kind, not the least of which has been the desperate effort made to utterly destroy our public reputation, while from the Army's earliest days it has had a ceaseless, wearying fight with financial difficulties." The severest persecutions of the past year were encountered in Switzerland; but even in this land of liberty, the Salvationists have not wholly escaped. In eleven different States their meetings have been suppressed by law, and fifty arrests have been made.

—According to a report that comes directly from Rome, Archbishop Gibbons of Baltimore is this month to be made a cardinal. The Independent sees nothing inconsistent in American Protestants "taking a certain pride in the prompt recognition which the holy see has given to the American branch of the church of Rome." The Catholic Church, it says, "is here among us, a powerful factor in our religious and social life, and it is here to stay; and it is better to welcome its liberal ideas than to fight it indiscriminately and uncompromisingly." We may gain some idea of the strength of the Romish element in American society from the fact that the new cardinal will be the honorary head of a church of 12 archbishops, 62 bishops, 7,296 priests, and a Catholic population of 7,000,000. Have Americans any reason to rejoice in the growing strength and influence of the Catholic Church?

—Spain has abolished the privileges of the Jesuits and the religious schools in that country, and has restored to the State the supervision of education. "Spain, the most abject and submissive vassal of the pope, has again learned that it is not safe to confide the training of its youth to intriguing Jesuits, and dares to resist and reject their control." The United States of Colombia also has seen the expediency of checking Jesuitical influence. The President of that republic has issued a proclamation in which he says that it is the duty of the Government to impede the ingress of persons who constitute a pernicious element, and prove an obstacle to the liberty and progress of the country. This "pernicious element" is composed of Roman Catholic priests of other nationalities, who breed disorder in the republic; and the President orders that such priests shall, on the discovery of their designs, be expelled from the country.