News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 23, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 24.

Read the full edition

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—A Council of Roman Catholic Archbishops will be held shortly in Baltimore.

—The income of the missionary society of the English Episcopalians is $1,161,095.

—It is said that the persecution of Christians outside of the Greek Church still continues in Russia.

—Of the 2,050,985 Baptists in the South, 985,814 are colored. The number of baptisms last year was 90,649.

—In the latter part of the present year the Congregational Churches of Australia will celebrate their centennial.

—It is said that during the past fifteen years the growth of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church has been very great.

—Dr. John Hall is authority for the statement that four-fifths of the crimes committed in New York City are perpetrated by Roman Catholics.

—The Wesleyan Church in Great Britain has only 1,970 regular ministers, but its local preachers number 15,000 and its class-leaders 24,579.

—The Pope has proclaimed the new Catholic hierarchy of Australia, making the Bishops of Adelaide, Brisbane, and Wellington metropolitans.

—A correspondent of the Christian at Work, writing of Portugal, says, "Most marriages and funerals are civil, to avoid the grasping exactions of the priests."

—There are said to be 27,000 heathen converts now employed as Christian evangelists to their countrymen, 2,500 of whom have been ordained as ministers of the gospel.

—"Jesuitism," says the Christian Union, "is hate masquerading as Christianity. Christianity insists on the motive of love. Jesuitism is sectarianism inspired by bigotry and hate."

—The journeymen bakers of Berlin have, it is said, a well-attended special church service on Thursday afternoons, that being their only spare time when they are not obliged to be at work.

—It is estimated that there are in Japan 106,629 Buddhist priests, which is about one to 350 of the population. In the United States there is one minister to about 650 of the population.

—His Majesty, the Shah of Persia, has authorized the American missionaries to establish at Teheran a hospital where, without distinction to creed or race, all seeking relief shall be received for treatment.

—The statement is made that the fiscal year recently closed has not been a prosperous one for the Protestant Churches in Ireland. As an example, the Sustentation Fund of the General Assembly is short this year, as compared with last, $9,080. The receipts this year are $99,885 as against $108,965.

—According to the Year Book of the Roman Catholic Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the total income of the Society for 1885, was 6,629,259 francs (about $1,325,852). More than two-thirds of this amount was collected in France. Some 5,000,000 francs was spent on heathen missions, and the remainder, 1,629,259 francs was used to oppose Protestantism.

—In an article in a late number of the Independent Rev. James H. Hoadley calls attention to the fact that the Presbyterians of New York City are not nearly keeping pace with the growth of the city. For instance, in 1845 when the population was only 371,223, there were in that city thirty-eight Presbyterian Churches while forty years later with a population of 1,500,000 there were only forty-one.

—The General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church has adopted a resolution that no student who uses tobacco in any form shall be licensed to the ministry or installed as a pastor, and that no user of tobacco shall be elected to office in any Reformed Presbyterian Church. And this the Christian at Work sneeringly calls "the new decalogue." It is however only a very just and proper recognition of more than one precept of the old decalogue.

—Professor Egbert C. Smith, of Andover Seminary, who was tried some months ago for teaching doctrines contrary to those laid down by the founders of the university has been found guilty by the Board of Visitors, and his office will be declared vacant. The charges against Smith's associates, Professors Tucker, Church, Harris and Edward H. Smith, were not sustained. The case of Smith will be carried to the Supreme Court, and in the meantime, as the trustees are with him and superior to the visitors, Professor Smith will continue to teach as heretofore.