News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 8, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 18.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The number of Roman Catholic clergy in England is 2,176.

—There are twenty-one Sunday-schools in connection with the Wesleyan mission in Ceylon.

—During the present century 150,000,000 copies of the Bible have been printed in 226 different languages.

—It is now announced that the Revised Version of the Old Testament is not to be published until next spring.

—The Spiritualists of Boston have just laid the corner-stone of a building to cost a quarter of a million dollars, and to be known as the "First Spiritual Temple."

—The Christian at Work says: "While there were last year some seven converts to each of our preachers in the United States, there were seventy converts to each of the missionaries in Asia."

—"A committee of the United Presbyterian church in Pittsburg has decided to ask the Legislature to make the use of instrumental music in churches unlawful." They will doubtless have to wait until the Religious Amendment to the Constitution is passed, and then the State will exist only for the purpose of serving the church.

—In an article by Dr. Cuyler in the Independent, addressed to young men, and entitled, "Where Do You Spend Your Evenings?" this sentence occurs, which we would especially emphasize: "Don't ask to be everlastingly amused; it is the mark of a baby mind, when a young man cares for nothing but fun and frolic." How many babies there are in the world.

—Rev. Charles Guest, Vicar of Christ Church, Burton-on-Trent, England, under pressure of the brewers of that town, has given his curate notice to leave for having recently published a pamphlet, "Why I am a Teetotaler." The same intolerant clergyman dismissed another of his curates a short time ago for publishing a pamphlet entitled "Drink and the Drink Traffic."

—The pope has prepared an encyclical against secret societies as the foes of the church. Bishops are requested to unmask, by pastoral letters, secret societies, and teach the people to abhor them, to extend Christian education, to urge agriculturists and workingmen to organize Catholic associations and conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, to watch schools and exhort youth never to become members of any society without first consulting their priests.

—In the "Ideas of the apostle Paul," by James Freeman Clarke, the following language is used, which is as true as if it came from the most orthodox minister in the land: "The law awakens the sense of responsibility, and gives us a high aim, which the gospel enables us to reach. Without the moral law to awaken conscience and arouse the sense of responsibility, grace would be ineffective. It is the united action of law and gospel which produces spiritual progress."

—At the fifty-fourth annual conference of the Mormons, recently held in Salt Lake City, there was an attendance of 12,000 from all parts of Utah. A Mormon population of 138,000 was reported, scattered over seven States and Territories. The number of church officials is 28,838. The number of missionaries sent out was ninety-five. One of the missionaries, the senior partner in a liquor store, who was chosen to preach the Mormon gospel in Great Britain, was the same day arrested and fined fifty dollars for selling whisky on Sunday.

—A writer in the Christian at Work, in an appeal for lay preachers, says: "Are we not constantly getting away from the practices of the primitive church, where every soul won to Christ was a preacher made for Christ? Is there any similarity to-day between our churches and the churches of those early days? What is our zeal and earnestness compared with even the zeal of the poor heathen who blindly worships gods made by his own hands? In our cold formalism, frigid dignity and respectability, we are sacrificing all that is worth retaining, and all that could be made truly effective in the work of Christ."

—C. A. Bartol, D. D., in the Independent, writes thus of Emerson: "I think he never fell or ate forbidden fruit. He seems an unsinned Adam, not expelled from the garden. He was transplanted hither from some celestial soil." "So pure and frank was he, that any assailing of his spirit or purpose was a sin against the Holy Ghost." This must have been the reason why Emerson did not believe in Christ—he was a rival. We have no disposition to criticize Emerson, but we do protest against the use of such language concerning any man. If the D. D. is responsible for what he says, he is guilty of blasphemy. We sincerely pity his congregation, if that is a sample of the husks upon which he feeds them.

—The International Sunday-school lessons have included the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, and in the notes many truths and errors have been published. Among the true things, we find the following in the S. S. Times. H. Clay Trumbull says, on verse 54: "'Then!' When? At the second coming of our Lord; at the first resurrection. Then, and not until then, is the hopeful saying to be 'brought to pass.' Death is not yet 'swallowed up in victory.' Death is now—and until his destruction he will be—an 'enemy.'" Rev. A. F. Schauger says: "Talk as men may about the 'poor body,' we still feel that it is a glorious thing, and, as a matter of fact, we cannot possibly conceive of our existing, except in connection with some kind of a body."