p. 375 | Religious Miscellany

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1875

Religious Miscellany.

—According to the London Tablet there are in India alone nearly two thousand missionary priests of the Roman Catholic faith.

—The Board of Educators of Chicago has discarded the Bible from the public school. There was but one vote opposing the proposition.

—Cardinal McCloskey, who has been obliged to go to Rome in person for his "red hat," is there, and has been received and embraced by the pope. The latter, according to the telegraph, has asked many questions of the Cardinal about his church in America, and he doubtless received some very hopeful answers.

—Spirit knockings, it seems, are nothing new. Among the manuscripts left by Richard Baxter is a letter in which he says: "I heartily thank you for your communication on the matter of apparitions, and dead men's candles. We have a house, three miles off, haunted with nightly knockings and walkings. We spent a day in prayer, and they were free for five or six months after that. Since, it is all as before."

—Traveling among the Baptist churches in Ireland this summer, Rev. Dr. Hague finds nothing cheering to say about them. He was disappointed at Belfast to find the pastor there had renounced his charge and was gathering a congregation that should be recognized simply as "Christian," and that in Cork and Dublin matters were hardly better. Most, if not all, of these churches have the "open door and broad table."

—As an illustration of the tendency that is now working toward a union of Christians of different creeds, it may be mentioned that at Stanley Pastures—now a collection of collieries—an enterprising firm has undertaken to erect an English Church, and they invited a rich old Quaker, David Dale—one of the same family which was connected with the Owens—to lay the corner stone. The Quaker performed the ceremony in the presence of several clergymen, and of the Vicar, who, when the church is erected, will read in it thirteen times a year that creed which dooms all Quakers to "perish everlastingly."

—After long discussion over the matter, the American Jews have organized a college at Cincinnati for the education of rabbis, who, heretofore, have all been trained abroad. In addition, all who are desirous of obtaining a substantial education for any avocation in after-life, and to be well informed in Hebrew lore and history, are welcome to the Hebrew Union College and the enjoyment of all the privileges and advantages it may offer. October 3 was the date for the formal opening of the institution, which, in the opinion of the American Israelite, will be an event full of incalculable importance to the Hebrew cause in the United States, "where, under the genial sun of freedom, in the centennial year of liberty, a new chapter of Israel's wonderful history shall be opened to the glory of God, and the fraternization and elevation of the human family."