p. 78 | RELIGIOUS by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 3, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 5.

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RELIGIOUS.

By Editor

—Moody is holding meetings in Chicago.

—It is stated that thirty-three missionary societies now have workers in Africa.

—The Scotch Free Church has recently established a mission among the Arabian Mohammedans.

—A Catholic priest at Johnstown, Pa., has refused the communion to any child attending the public schools.

—The United Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board sent out thirteen missionaries last month for India and Egypt.

—According to a recent statement the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions is two hundred thousand dollars in debt!

—An encouraging feature of evangelistic work in India is said to be the presence of women of the middle class at preaching places.

—According to the report of their last General Conference, the Universalists have in this country 900 churches and 35,214 members.

—It is stated that the number of candidates for the ministry of the Episcopal Church in the United States is 344, a smaller number than at any time since 1868.

—It is stated that the distress occasioned in the Turkish Empire by poverty and excessive taxation, greatly hindered missionary operations in that country during 1886.

—On the occasion of the coming jubilee the Pope will present $100,000 to the Societas de Propaganda Fide, a society in Rome charged with the management of Roman Catholic missions.

—According to the New Haven (Conn.) Union, small boys are arrested in that city for skating on Sunday, but riding on a bicycle is a favorite and entirely legal diversion. Sleigh-riding is permitted, but coasting is vigorously prohibited. From which it appears that there are some fine distinctions made in Sunday laws.

—Ingersoll is credited with saying not long since that "the time is coming when a man will be judged by what he does with his money." Upon which the Pittsburg Commercial Gazette remarks that "this is tough news for those people who pay one dollar for a front seat to laugh at his shallow blasphemies."

—Rev. George F. Pentecost, of Brooklyn, has written an article for the Independent, in which he aims to prove that the week of prayer ought to be abolished. The reason which he gives for this conclusion is that the spiritual life has been taken out of the institution by an excess of red tape in arranging its topics.

—The New York correspondent of a Pittsburgh, Pa., paper complains that upon a recent Sunday there were 40,000 skaters on the ice in the lake in Central Park. He adds: "These thousands were not by any means the non-church people. Pastors could have seen now and then the communicants of their own congregation in the mass of laughing movers."

—In giving a brief review of foreign missions for the year 1886, the Christian Statesman says, "In Roman Catholic Europe there has been little change in the attitude of governments or the Papacy." This is probably true if we understand it to apply to the attitude of governments and the Papacy towards Protestant missions; but if we understand it to mean that the attitude of some of the civil governments of Europe has not changed toward the Papacy, then it is a great mistake. The victory which the cohorts of Rome gained in the revision of the May Laws in Germany is not a "little change;" and the events of the past year have shown that though the Pope has at present no territory, his political influence is ten times as great as that of any princes who rule over millions of subjects and thousands of square miles of territory.