News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 5, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 42.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Joseph Cook has begun a series of Sunday-afternoon temperance lectures in Music Hall, Boston.

—A new steamer costing $30,000 has just been constructed for the use of missions on the River Niger.

—The staff of officers of St. George's Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh, Scotland, consists of forty-six elders and forty-two deacons.

—The Brooklyn Board of Assessors has decided not to tax the property of the Young Men's Christian Association of that city.

—A number of released slaves in Zanzibar have printed large portions of the Bible in their native language, so that it may be read throughout the interior.

—Canon Farrar asserts that ritualism is more popular now in England than it ever was, and that its leanings toward the church of Rome are especially marked.

—Over 64,000 Catholic pilgrims have visited the shrine of St. Ann of Beaupre, in Canada, since January 1. Many wonderful miracles are claimed to have been performed.

—In Kamschatka there is a Lutheran church of one thousand members, scattered over an immense district. The members use six different languages: German, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Estish, and Lettish.

—The seventy-fifth anniversary of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions was held in Boston, October 13-18. The total receipts of the Board for the year ending September 1, were $508,491.61.

—It is said that at Vienna, last year, not less than 263 Jews became Christians, among whom were thirteen barristers, nine physicians, four journalists, three judges, three professors, and seventeen merchants and manufacturers.

—The society started by the Countess of Dufferin for supplying medical aid to the women in India is making good progress. Several native chiefs have given it financial aid. The prospectus has been translated into the various languages used, and will be scattered broadcast over the country.

—The leading Liberal and Nonconformist clergymen of Scotland have sent a memorial to Mr. Gladstone, urging him to use his influence to aid in securing the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland, as a legislative step demanded by political justice as well as by national religion in that part of the empire.

—Judges Zane and Powers have recently instructed Utah grand juries that they can render separate indictments for every day in which Mormon polygamists persist in violating the law. This ruling is striking terror to the hearts of the law-breakers, as the penalty for each indictment is six months' imprisonment and $300 fine.

—The wife of Dr. George MacDonald has dramatized "Pilgrim's Progress." It is said that "Miss MacDonald represents Christiana with great naturalness," and that "all the accessories of the stage are in faultless taste." We cannot imagine anything more directly calculated to detract from the sacredness of religion, unless it should be a dramatization of the life of Christ.

—The new building of the Young Men's Christian Association of Brooklyn, N. Y., which has recently been formally dedicated, is the finest building of its kind in the country. It cost $300,000, and has an endowment fund of $150,000. It is a four-story brick and terra cotta structure, and contains a hall capable of seating 1,400 persons, a library with shelf-room for 30,000 volumes, a large gymnasium, spacious parlors, baths, and rooms for the officers. The building covers 19,000 square feet.

—The Friends are disturbed. Some of their prominent members—even some "holding the position of ministers of the gospel"—"have submitted themselves to the rite of water baptism, and have partaken of the bread and wine in the so-called communion of the Lord's Supper"! One of the organs of the Friends, in proposing a re-opening of the subject, says: "If it be possible that Friends are wrong, and that our fathers have been in error these two hundred years, better that we find it out before we go further. We shall not get on well in holding unscriptural grounds, even though we are full of the evangelistic and missionary spirit."