News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1886

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—“If London did not have four hundred city missionaries,” said the Earl of Shaftesbury, “it would require 40,000 more police.”

—St. Peter’s at Rome is to have a square portico in front, formed by forty-eight granite columns ornamented with statues of the apostles. Another bridge is to be built over the Tiber, making a direct communication between St. Peter’s and the beautiful church of St. Paul, without the walls.

—The Moniteur de Rome, which is the recognized organ of the Vatican, longs for the time to come “when the world shall see Protestantism extirpated from Ireland entirely, and Catholicism universally recognized.” Substitute “the world” for “Ireland,” and you will have just what the pope and all his minions are working for.

—Chief-Justice Waite and other prominent citizens of Washington are planning to form a Children’s Aid Society in that city similar to the one in New York. It appears that not more than two-thirds of the children of school age attend school; and a fifth of the criminals last year were between the ages of ten and twenty.

—The Roman Catholic Church in Australia has “outgrown the missionary state;” and a Plenary Council has recently been held there, to conform “her internal policy to that of the church in older lands.” The Council was presided over by Cardinal Moran, and was attended by sixteen bishops and many other ecclesiastical dignitaries.

—Mayor Smith of Philadelphia, at the request of the “Sabbath Association,” has issued a proclamation calling attention to a law of 1794, forbidding any worldly employment or business on Sunday. But the law seemed to have no terrors for those who had been in the habit of doing business on that day, and it is generally believed that it cannot be enforced unless coercive measures are resorted to by its friends. The animus of the attempt to enforce this obsolete and almost forgotten law cannot be mistaken.

—In a recent sermon Mr. Spurgeon said: “I have but little care, as a general rule, for the Revised New Testament, holding it to be by no means an improvement upon our common authorized version. It is a useful thing to have it for private reference; but I trust it will never be regarded as the standard English translation of the New Testament. The Revised Version of the Old Testament is so excellent that I am half afraid it may carry the Revised New Testament upon its shoulders into general use. I sincerely hope that this may not be the case; for the result would be a decided loss.” With the exception of the unqualified praise of the Revised Old Testament, we think that this verdict is a just one.

—Postmaster-General Vilas, out of respect to the “moral sense of the community,” has decided that Baltimore shall not have a Sunday mail delivery. This leads the Tribune, to say: “A large accumulation of moral sense, not to speak of common sense, backed the petition which the business men of the United States addressed to Mr. Vilas, begging him not to array himself against them by crippling the mail service. But Mr. Vilas, who is so tender of Baltimore’s Sunday morning, showed that he cared nothing at all about the best interests of business men. It is statesmen like Vilas who strain at a gnat, and swallow a whole caravan of camels.” Mr. Vilas has not shown himself a competent and faithful officer; but his action in this matter will no doubt make him popular with a large and influential class.

—A correspondent of the London Times has been investigating the use made of the relief fund raised for the benefit of the sufferers from earthquakes and cholera in Spain. The whole sum sent to Spain was $4,211,040. The amount placed in the hands of the Royal Commission was $1,242,200, of which only $168,442 has been used for the aid of the sufferers. “The Bank of Spain had the profitable use of these charity funds for over a year, and now the Commission propose to use them in building bridges for the public roads!” The archbishops of Southern Spain refused to account for the money intrusted to them; and no wonder, for they had used it in repairing their churches and convents. “Nowhere else but in priest-ridden Spain,” says the Illustrated Christian Weekly, “could such sacred funds have been used for bank speculation, bridge-building, and church restoration.”