News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 17, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 11.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Last year 52,000 Protestant tracts were circulated in Greece.

—Pope Leo is about to issue an encyclical against Socialism.

—About one-third of the 100,000 Jews in this country are in New York.

—One thousand carpenters and joiners in Berlin have recently petitioned the German Government to protect them against Sunday labor.

—At Dresden, Germany, nearly a thousand glass workers have been discharged because of their refusal to labor on the first day of the week.

—There are, it is said, over one hundred applicants for the pastorate of the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Minneapolis, Minn., whose pastor resigned a few weeks since.

—Joseph Cook says that among "the educated and upper classes in Asia, hereditary misbelief, when given up, is more readily replaced by imported unbelief than by Christianity."

—The Religious Tract Society of London, England, has had "Pilgrim's Progress" published in the Japanese language. This makes the eighty-first language into which this work has been translated.

—A new church known as the Deutsche Christus Kirche, has been organized at Oshkosh, Wis. It is composed mostly of Knights of Labor who have withdrawn from the Lutheran communion.

—The Christian Nation says: "We are rejoicing at the unmistakable signs pointing to the final enlistment of the whole Presbyterian family for the advocacy of the great principle of National Reform."

—There are in the cities of New York, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati, 2,264 Roman Catholic priests.

—A correspondent of the London Nonconformist says of religious freedom in Austria: "Not a tract or book must be given away. The Holy Scriptures cannot be freely sold by colporters. There can be no free preaching of the gospel with open doors in public halls or private houses. All that is allowed is family worship."

—A Methodist preacher in Seabright, N. J., created a sensation a few days ago by publicly reading two ladies out of his church for dancing. When the notice was read from the pulpit many of the congregation got up and left the church. Many of the members who sustain the ladies are talking of forcing the parson to a resignation.

—A Protestant minister writing from Rome says, "I am informed that already the Jesuits have managed so adroitly that they have got the controlling power in the Italian Government." And again: "It is said that the Italian Government is really at the mercy of the Jesuits; and the Roman liberators are alarmed at the present outlook."

—The Christian at Work says: "It is reported that in return for the Pope's recent friendship Germany has consented to act as mediator between the Italian Government and the Vatican. The Vatican's proposal is that part of Rome, including 'Leonine City,' and a zone extending from the Vatican to the sea, by Civita Vecchia, shall become the absolute property of the Pope."

—In obedience to a decree of the late Plenary Council at Baltimore, the Catholics have been taking up collections for the support of missions among the Indians and negroes of the United States. Commenting upon this, an Eastern paper says: "This means aggressive work, and the institution of effective missionary work by the Roman Catholic Church in this country with a view to winning them over to Roman Catholicism."

—Speaking of the means of reaching the masses in city and country with the gospel, the Christian at Work says: "We suggest that be it city or country, the church has got to inaugurate house-to-house visitation. It has got to be done or city and country will travel devil-ward. And especially so as the Catholics are instituting parochial schools, inasmuch as it is already foreseen that sectarianism is not to find an open door to the public school-houses."