News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 18, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 11.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—A temple is to be erected for the use of Spiritualists at Neshaminy Falls, Pa.

—The Bavarian Parliament proposes to give all the employes on its railways half of the Sunday.

—The increase in the membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church South last year is said to be 50,000.

—A Sioux Indian, a graduate of the school at Hampton, Va., is studying in the theological seminary at Alexandria.

—Prague, in Bohemia, where Jerome was born, and the martyr Huss preached, has elected a Protestant mayor for the first time in 200 years.

—The Methodist Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society is taking measures to establish a Home in Seoul, the capital of Corea. The ground has already been purchased.

—The Pope has appointed Mgr. Gossens to be Chief of Clergy in Congo State. A Catholic seminary is being founded at Douvain, where students will be especially trained for service in Congo.

—Hundreds of persons attended a “faith cure” convention recently held in a Methodist church in Brooklyn, and a number of persons claimed that they were cured of diseases of years’ standing.

—Two influential schools in Tokio, Japan, that have formerly been opposed to Christianity, have each employed a missionary as one of the teachers; and regular instruction in the Bible will be given.

—The news comes from Rome that the pope has decided to appoint another American cardinal besides Archbishop Gibbons of Baltimore. The favored recipient of the honor is Archbishop Taschereau of Quebec.

—Bishop William Taylor, who is in charge of an extensive missionary enterprise in Central Africa, calls for 15 or 20 volunteers, men and women, who will be self-supporting. He wants a number of artisans, and asks for donations of mechanic’s tools, farming implements, etc.

—Four missionaries have already been assigned to the newly opened field of Upper Burmah, and two or three of them are on the ground. The missionaries do not mean to lose all their labor through the influence of the rumseller either; for the Missionary Conference at Rangoon has taken steps to prevent the introduction of liquor and opium into this province.

—Dr. Howard Crosby, in an article published in the Christian at Work not a great while ago, took the singular position that the Sunday-sabbath is twofold in its nature, having both a religious and a political character; and that while as a religious institution it is a matter of conscience, as a civil institution it is a legitimate subject of legislation. The Christian at Work quotes Justice Field of the United States Supreme Court in support of this position, as follows: “Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of rest are upheld, not from any right of the Government to legislate for the promotion of religious observances, but from its right to protect all persons from the physical and moral debasement which comes from uninterrupted labor. Such laws have always been deemed beneficent and merciful, . . . and their validity has been sustained by the highest courts of the States.” This theory is a good illustration of the ingenuity that is required to sustain a weak cause. But Dr. Crosby makes one statement that every one who has watched the Sabbath controversy can readily indorse, when he says that this “question needs to be stripped of many of its foggy points.”