News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 5, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 30.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—At the session of the United Presbyterian Assembly at Hamilton, Ohio, last month, it was resolved to secede from the Presbyterian Alliance. Two reports were submitted on the question of instrumental music in churches. The majority favor the use of organs in worship, while the minority oppose it.

Mr. Gustafson, as quoted in the Independent, says that “in Sweden distilling was first practiced in the parsonages;” and that “it is from their spiritual teachers that the peasants first learned this pernicious habit.” With truth it may be said that instead of bread, those teachers have given their flock a serpent.

—Here’s modesty: The Baptist Flag puts the following in capital letters: “We still affirm, and are able to prove, that the Baptist Church is the balance wheel of the Christian universe. Without the powerful restraint of Baptists, the Protestant and reformed denominations would find a level in the vale of Sodom on a plane with Roman Catholicism.”

—In Baltimore, a few days ago, a man was fined ten dollars and sentenced to twenty days’ imprisonment for using profane language in a public square. We would like to know whether or not that arrest and conviction was due to the high moral sentiment of Baltimore. If so, then we must certainly congratulate Baltimore on having but one profane man in its limits.

In Ecuador, with a Roman Catholic Church for every 150 inhabitants, with 10 per cent. of the population priests, monks, or nuns, with 272 days in the year feast or fete days, with a quarter of the wealth of the State in the hands of the church, and with the priests controlling all branches of the Government, 75 per cent. of the people can neither read nor write!—Cal. Christian Advocate.

—The Catholic Mirror says: “The Moniteur de Rome has information from Cettigne that the Prince of Montenegro has dispatched a plenipotentiary to Rome for the purpose of concluding a concordat with the Vatican, in order to secure the diocesan autonomy of the Montenegrin Catholics. It is certainly a remarkable sight to observe Leo XIII. negotiating simultaneously with the ruler of the vastest empire on the earth, and with that of the smallest of principalities.”