News and Notes
8%International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1886
FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 50.
Read the full editionNews and Notes.
RELIGIOUS.
- Rabbi Schindler, of New York, holds that the Hebrews should conform to the majority as to the day which shall be observed as a rest day.
- The Watchman "Star Notes" says: "The spirit of ambition in young ministers is not found only in the theological schools in the United States. Away over in Switzerland, there is found among the young preachers a disinclination to work in the small churches among the hills."
- Dr. Pentecost's church in Brooklyn, N. Y., has decided to have two ministers, one a pastor whose duties will relate specially to that church, the other, Dr. Pentecost himself, "will be employed by the church as its evangelist, with commission to do all the good he can, first at home, and then all about."
- The Christian Statesman says: "The Congregational Church of Connecticut is preparing to renew the ineffectual effort made before the Legislature of last winter to prevent the running of Sabbath trains." Of course by Sabbath, the Statesman means Sunday; or, as the committee calls it, "the New England Sabbath," which should not be confounded with "the Sabbath of the Lord," which according to the Scriptures is the seventh day of the week, while "the New England Sabbath" is the first day.
- Said Prof. N. K. Davis, professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Virginia, at the Baltimore Congress: "If religious doctrine cannot live without civil law, let it die." We heartily concur.
- In the late Baptist Congress in Baltimore, Prof. E. H. Johnson, of Crozier Theological Seminary, said that "all the best exegetes deny that the Lord's day [by which he means Sunday] takes its authority from the fourth commandment. Alcuin in the days of Charlemagne [A. D. 768 to 814], was the first one to base the observance of the Lord's day on the Jewish Sabbath."
- In lamenting the "growing disregard" for Sunday, the Congregationalist says: "Unless the people of God come to the rescue, and do it soon, we shall have in this country no more Sabbath than they have in France." Indeed, that seems very evident since we now have little but the Sunday, and the determination seems to be to make that crowd the Sabbath out altogether.
- At the recent Baptist Congress in Baltimore, Rev. N. C. Van Meter, missionary at Rome, presented to the president an indulgence which he had purchased in Rome. Said he, "Souls of men are prayed out of purgatory for four francs, and when one gets out, the organ strikes up a lively tune, provided the priest gets his money. . . . You will see men every day selling indulgences in the church of St. Augustine, as in the days of Martin Luther."
- The New York Independent says: "At the recent conference of the Church Association, in Bristol, England, papers were presented, designed to show that Romanizing practices are going on in the Church of England, and extracts from books of devotion and from hymnals were given to prove the Romanistic character of the teaching in some of the churches. In sacred songs for children, the following is said to be found, with much more of like character:—