News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 1, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 46.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—There are forty millions of Presbyterians in the world.

—The New York Methodist Book Concern has recently paid nearly half a million of dollars ($439,000) for a new site for its publishing house.

—The English Catholics have recently made a notable innovation in the church service in allowing the psalms to be sung in English instead of Latin at vespers.

—A conference to discuss the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures was held in Philadelphia, commencing on the 18th inst., and some of the most prominent biblical scholars in the country, it is said, took part in it.

—The Roman Catholic Church has in Great Britain 1,600 chapels, 254 monasteries, 415 convents, 29 colleges, and 2,599 priests. The gains since 1870 have been as follows: Chapels, 256; monasteries, 155; convents, 182; colleges, 9; and priests, 872.

—Constant vigilance, we are told, is the only safeguard of liberty; and constant watchfulness and decision on the part of Protestants and of all true Americans are demanded for the perpetuation and purity of our common-school system.—Religious Herald, Hartford.

—Says the Interior: "Something must be done to hold in check those Christianized Indians in the Indian Presbytery of Dakota, or they will leave the rest of us behind. Our minutes show that during our ecclesiastical year that presbytery, composed of converted Sioux Indians, gave $571 more to foreign missions than any other presbytery in the synod, and during the last synodical year it gave to the nine boards of our church $234 more than any of the white presbyteries of the synod."

—The Catholic Assembly of Hungary has voted to present to the Pope an address signed by 1,500,000 men and 86,000 women. The address favors the restoration of temporal power to the Pope. It is feared in official circles that this feature of the address will make a bad impression in Italy.

—An attempt was recently made by the First Unitarian Society in Hartford, Conn., to depose their pastor, Rev. J. C. Kimball, because of his avowal of sympathy with the Chicago anarchists in a recent sermon. The women of the society, however, supported Mr. Kimball in a body and the attempt to oust him failed.

—The Toronto Globe says: "An announcement of a church lottery in Western Ontario has been sent to us with a request to notice. We do notice—with the most unqualified condemnation—any attempt by any church to raise money by means of the gambling habit. Nothing but a curse could rest on money thus obtained."

—A half-hearted service in religion is neither acceptable to God nor satisfying to the soul. It prevents a person from enjoying the pleasures of the world, but does not secure the spiritual pleasures which true religion imparts. If a man would be truly happy, he must be wholly on the Lord's side, and serve him with all his heart.—Methodist Recorder.

—Three hundred thousand women of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union have agreed to pray in private and in their meetings for the 54,000 men who constitute the ministry of the United States, that they may all become total abstainers and advocates of prohibition. They have also determined to send them each a copy of the New York Voice, the leading prohibition paper.