News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 44.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The great Bible publishing house founded at Halle, Saxony, early in this century, is about to issue the thousandth edition of its octavo Bible, of which 2,112,790 copies have been printed.

—The “Basis of Union” prepared by a joint committee of the Associate Reformed and the United Presbyterian Churches over a year ago has been rejected by a majority of the Presbyteries of the latter body.

—At the late annual convention of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union held recently in Minneapolis, Minn., one missionary among the lumbermen said that nine-tenths of the money paid to them went to saloons.

—The most important change made in the Episcopal prayer-book at the late General Convention, is said to be the “liberty given the ministers to shorten the evening service materially by omitting the sentences and exhortations and most of the prayers.” This is a concession we suppose to the general demand for short services consisting mainly of operatic music.

—The New York Observer remarks that “it is somewhat unfortunate that the two great missionary schemes of the Episcopal Church have come before the General Convention as complete failures.” The Missionary Enrollment Fund, and the American Church Building Fund, each of which were to be one million dollars, have realized only $78,000 and $68,000 respectively.

—At a recent meeting of Congregational divines in Hartford, Conn., a resolution was introduced denouncing Sunday newspapers and advising ministers and members of churches not to buy them. But “Rev. Mr. Park, of Birmingham, threw a bombshell into the camp by advocating Sunday papers. He said it was a settled fact that they had come to stay.” The report says that “the resolution was recommitted to be reported in a modified form.”

—At the annual meeting of the British Evangelical Alliance at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, September 23, 1886, Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D., speaking of what he terms the “scheme of the subjugation of Great Britain to the Vatican,” said: “There remains but one other statement, and it is, perhaps, the most distressing and humiliating of all. This vast propaganda is fed by our own money. The sum total of grants from Great Britain now given for Popish uses year by year, is £1,200,000 [$6,000,000]. That £1,200,000 we give for our own undoing.”

—Speaking of the new Andover theology the Nashville Christian Advocate says: “We do not know that there is a Methodist preacher in the church who has made any approaches to the adoption of such future probation heresies. But it is said, and with a color of truth, that a few have begun to indulge in what are called ‘broad views.’ All these things spring from the same cause, and tend to the same end. They arise from the absence of warm, evangelical piety. They are the glaciers of religious life, formed by the chill which falls upon men exercising themselves in matters too high for them.”