p. 158 | News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 10.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Three thousand British churches use unfermented wine at the Lord's supper.

—The Russian Government, it is said, has refused to establish diplomatic relations with the Pope.

—The next General Conference of Protestant missionary societies will be held in London in 1888.

—About one-fourth of the five hundred Chinese now living in Philadelphia, Pa., attend Sunday-schools.

—There are in England about 3,000 Jewish converts to Christianity, 100 of whom are in the active ministry.

—Russia has a population of 87,105,089, of whom 61,941,200 are Greek Catholics and 8,300,000 Roman Catholics.

—Archbishop Croke, of Ireland, advocates the non-payment of taxes, with which he says the Government buys police bludgeons.

—The statement is made that in Galicia, Roumania, and Bessarabia whole families of Jews assemble in secret to read the New Testament.

—An Eastern paper says that of the 600,000 young men in Illinois "fully 500,000 are still outside of the membership of our evangelical churches."

—It is thought that there are now in the world not less than 12,000 Protestant mission schools. Eighty years ago there were not over seventy.

—A writer in the Christian Standard says: "From all Christian lands the same cry comes, The church is losing its influence over the working masses."

—The annual expenses of the Pope are said to be 8,000,000 lire (about $1,600,000); and his probable income for 1887 is estimated at about 7,000,000 lire.

—A petition on behalf of the Free Church of Scotland has been forwarded to Queen Victoria, praying that their missions in New Hebrides may be protected from French interference.

—One daily paper in Oakland and another in San Francisco have recently discontinued their Sunday editions. In the case of the Oakland journal it is stated that the discontinuance was at the request of "the clergy."

—It is stated that the Pope has summoned several French bishops to confer with him relative to the steps to be taken by "the church," in the event of fresh measures being taken against the Catholic clergy in France.

—In 1875 the savages of New Britain had, properly speaking, no language; but six years later, owing to the efforts of missionaries, there were forty-three boys who could read the Gospel of Mark in their own tongue as well as the missionaries.

—A letter to the Christian World (London, Eng.) from Paris, says: "Alas! it cannot be truly said that indifference, unbelief, and materialism are losing ground in Paris, and if faith is making progress, it is by advances so slight and so slow as to be almost imperceptible."

—W. S. Caine, M. P., asserts that the most conspicuous sign of the civilizing influence of the English Government in Egypt is "an enormous number of grog-shops and brothels." There are no less than four hundred grog-shops in Cairo, most of which bear English signs.

—"Without the approval and consent of the bishop," is the saving clause in a recent order from Bishop Curtis, of Wilmington, Del., forbidding, in his diocese, the holding of "balls given with the intention of raising money for religious purposes, or the holding of picnics, fairs, excursions, or entertainments of any kind for the benefit of anything religious or charitable."

—"The Good Works of False Faiths," and "Are the Heathen Our Inferiors?" are subjects treated by Mrs. Gail Hamilton and Mr. Joseph Hewes, in a late number of the North American Review, and in reference to them the Christian World remarks: "The very titles of such articles give a clue to the tendency of the writers; and it is one that will probably manifest itself more and more as time goes on."

—Because of the loose views which have become common in certain portions of the Christian church, the Presbytery of New York has recently felt called upon to "emphasize the declaration of the Confession of Faith, 'the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, are the word of God,' that the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek are immediately inspired of God, and that there is a consent of all their parts."

—If that erratic and sensational preacher, Sam Jones, has a mission from the Lord, it must be to preach in the popular churches truths which a time-serving ministry neglects, and which the people would not otherwise hear. There are comparatively few pulpits of which the following of his utterances is not true: "Mark what I tell you—and I say it for the ears of the preachers, I say it for the ears of every preacher in America—we have got some scientific preachers, some philosophical preachers, and I tell you there is many a pulpit in America to-day that you may go into, and it will be like Mary at the sepulcher, and you can say, They have taken the Lord and his word away, and we know not where they have carried them."