News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 4, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 42.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—It is stated that there are over 100,000 colored Baptists in Mississippi.

—It is said that 40,000 copies of the Hebrew New Testament have been circulated among the Jews in Hungary.

—Some little idea of what Roman Catholicism will do for a country may be gained from the fact that in Spain over seventy-five per cent. of the population can neither read nor write.

—The French missionaries, in the service of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society, propose to publish a paper for the benefit of the 300,000 French people in New England. The society approves the plan.

—Details have recently been received in London of the massacre of native Christians in Uganda, Africa. Many Christians were tortured, mutilated, and speared, and thirty-two were burned alive. The massacre began in June, and was directly due to the refusal of a Christian lad, acting as the king's page, to commit an abominable crime.

—Professor Egbert Smyth has told the Congregational Council that the Andover professors do not teach future probation "as a doctrine but simply as a dogma." This explanation is no doubt very satisfactory to the professors, but it remains to be seen how much weight it will have with the Board of Visitors before which they must answer for their teaching.

—In a recent Russian letter to the New York Observer, Rev. Gideon Draper, D. D., says: "The established Greek Church is not of native growth. . . . It is foreign. . . . This religion, transplanted from Constantinople, is lifeless and cold. The extremely religious people cry for bread and receive a stone. Gentle-mannered, affectionate, teachable, they are the sad victims of religious ignorance and superstition."

—The Baptist Quarterly says that "the case is yet to be recorded wherein a Baptist council has advised the ordination of a candidate who frankly professed his belief in a probation after death." Notwithstanding this fact, however, the Baptists are not altogether free from the taint of the New Theology, for one of their most recently settled pastors in Boston, "is understood," says the Congregationalist, "to stand with the new departure men."

—What a "liberal"-hearted Christian Cardinal Gibbons is! In a letter to the Independent, he says: "In all this broad land there is no one who longs for truly Christian union more than I do; no one who would labor more earnestly to bring about so happy a result." But then he says that the requisites for Christian union can be found only in the Catholic Church as it was when Luther went out from it, and as it is to-day. The Pope is also a believer in "Christian union."

—At the Episcopalian convention recently held in Chicago, a resolution was offered with the design of changing the name of that body from Protestant Episcopal to American Catholic. There were 134 votes in favor of the change, and only 94 against it; but as two-thirds of the votes were necessary for the passage of the resolution, the change will not be made at present. The Mirror thinks it scandalous that the Episcopalians should desire to appropriate the Catholic name, but it seems to us very fitting. Why should the name "Protestant" be retained by those who have ceased to protest?