News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 23, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 49.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Colonel Robert Lincoln has presented to the Lincoln Memorial Protestant Episcopal Church of Chicago President Lincoln's Bible, which he frequently read while in the White House.

—A mandate from Cardinal Taschereau, read in Catholic churches at Quebec, Sunday, prohibits Catholics from attending meetings of the Salvation Army. Tracts and hymn-books distributed by the Salvationists must be thrown in the fire.

—A telegram from St. Catherines, Ont., November 22, said: "This city is considerably agitated over a Sunday work meeting held recently, at which it was decided to petition the Government against opening the Welland Canal on Sunday." The same day summonses were issued for the arrest of twenty lock-tenders employed on the canal for working and passing vessels through on Sunday.

—The Watchman (Baptist) says: "A single church in one of the Boston associations reports this year $25,000 for home expenses, and yet in the last fiscal year's report of the convention, the name of that church does not appear as contributing a penny for the common cause in the State." Surely the members of that church are described by the apostle in 2 Tim. 3:2,—"lovers of their own selves."

—Professor Elliot Whipple, of New Mexico, says, in a recent letter to the Cynosure: "Sante Fe is evidently regarded by the Catholics as a strategic point, and here they are massing their forces with full purpose to hold in perpetuity their present ascendancy in the affairs of the Territory. The public schools of New Mexico, outside of Albuquerque and possibly a few other places, are under priestly control and of little practical value."

—Speaking of the condition of Japan, the Advance says: "The whole population is seething in the ferment of a new intellectual life. . . . More than three hundred newspapers, many of them pictorial, are eagerly conned by hundreds of thousands of readers. But they are, in the main, unutterably, almost inconceivably, vile. A chaos of skepticism, a pandemonium of iniquity, is the future into which Japan is rushing unless saved by our gospel."

—A correspondent of an Eastern Baptist paper complains of Baptist preachers running for office; and asks: "Why should he [the minister] entangle himself with civil or political affairs? Can he serve two masters?" If the correspondent will only be patient for a few years the National Reformers will probably be able to solve this problem satisfactorily. They propose to "crown Christ king of this nation," and then the minister may be a politician and still serve only the one Master.

—In an address before the late Prophetic Conference at Chicago, Rev. Dr. Frost, of Sacramento, Cal., said: "There are more unconverted persons in the world to-day than ever before. So long as sinners increase far more rapidly than saints, will some one tell how long it will take to convert the world? At the rate of advancement for the last eighteen hundred years the endless cycles of eternity would not be sufficient to furnish the requisite ages for the conversion of the world."

—The Hackmen's Union of Montreal has issued a circular stating that, as God commanded man to keep the Sabbath-day holy, they have agreed to abstain from labor on Sundays, and have requested all the hackmen to follow their example. Just what God's commandment to keep "the Sabbath-day holy" has to do with abstaining "from labor on Sunday" the hackmen do not explain. Indeed it is not an easy matter to make it appear that when God says the seventh day he means the first day. Even "theologians" find that rather difficult.