p. 14 | News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 26.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The Iowa Congregationalists have licensed a woman to preach and take a regular pastoral charge.

—The corner-stone of a Baptist denominational college was laid at Highland Park, Oakland, Cal., June 30.

—Dr. Newman Hall has nineteen Sunday-schools in connection with his church in London, in which there are 5,600 pupils.

—The Presbyterian clergy in Maryland are agitating a change in the State Constitution's proviso debarring ministers from holding seats in the Legislature.

—The Dean of Winchester states that in England and Wales there are 600,000 Sunday-school teachers, and 5,200,000 scholars; that is, one-fifth of the whole population are in Sunday-schools.

—The Waldensian Church has now 15,000 communicants, 59 churches, 36 missions, a seminary, a college, a female high school, a grammar school, 3 hospitals, an orphanage, a trades' school, 250 primary schools, and publishes several periodicals.

—Says Rev. Wm. A. Lloyd: "The practical ungodliness of intelligent and reputable people is an effective commendation of atheism, and [is] largely responsible for its gross and dangerous development among the ignorant. Ungodliness is incipient atheism, of which anarchy is only the fuller unfolding."

—In his Baccalaureate sermon at Trinity College, Connecticut, Dr. Morgan Dix said: "In our day it looks as if the foundations of Christian education have been undermined so effectually that even the great towers are ready to fall. Large numbers of educators, in revolt from their old faith, are engaged in experiments of which no one can see the end."

—A "Gospel Wagon" has been started by the Central Union Mission of Washington, D. C. This wagon, which is an ordinary omnibus, containing a cabinet organ, six or eight good singers, several persons to make addresses, etc., visits three centers of non-church-going people every Sunday afternoon, and its occupants hold a meeting and invite their hearers to the mission.

—Professor Lyman, of Yale College, is quoted as saying: "Spiritualism is growing in the world. It may surprise you to know that within the limits of civilization over one hundred journals are devoted to the theory. Spiritualism has many distinguished devotees here, in England, and in Germany. Members of the British nobility are believers, as are eminent British University professors and scientists."

—In a paper entitled, "Present Necessity for a Restatement of Christian Beliefs," read before the Cleveland Church Congress, by Daniel Curry, D. D., we find the following truth, which too many refuse to recognize: "The student of church history is well aware that large and influential portions of the churches of the Reformation were but partially emancipated from the traditions of Romanism—especially in respect to the character and design of the sacraments—the nature of the church, and its 'binding and loosing,' and as to the right of personal free thought in all religious matters. It is also known that at the present time not a few who bear the name of Protestant are still held in that form of bondage."

—The Christian Union, in replying to a lady correspondent who says that she does not like to go to church because she does not find sermons interesting, says, among other good things: "Dismiss from your mind the idea that the first duty of a preacher is to be interesting. That is the first duty of a novel, but not of a sermon. The first duty of a sermon is to be profitable. Of course if it is interesting also, so much the better; but if it is merely interesting, it is no true sermon. . . . You do not ask your boy whether he finds his school interesting, but whether he finds it profitable; you look to his teacher not to entertain, but to instruct him. Perhaps if you set yourself to find some thoughts that will help you to be a better woman during the week, from the uninteresting sermon, you may find them even in a very poor one. It is not always possible to find them; but we are sure of two things: one, that the failure of a hearer to get any profit out of a sermon is quite as often the hearer's fault as the preacher's; the other, that the best way not to get profit is to look for interest." With all of which we heartily agree.