News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 29.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The Moody converts in London are estimated at 34,000.

—According to a Boston writer, the old Channing Unitarian Church makes the humiliating confession that it has not had an accession to its communicants in thirteen years.

—In an article in the Independent, Dr. T. T. Munger advises young college graduates to adopt the ministry as their profession, in preference to practicing medicine, on the ground that the latter profession is overcrowded to such a degree that it no longer promises a support to those who enter it, while in the former there is abundance of room, taking the whole country into consideration, and the minister earns a living from the first.

—Commenting on the fact that at the recent meeting of the alumni of Andover Seminary, the two essayists placed Christianity before the Bible in the order of history and in point of actual importance, the Churchman says: "It gives the keynote of much that is going on in the world of religious thought." "Once it was the Bible, and the Bible only; now it is beginning to be Christianity before the Bible. The question arises how soon it will be the church as the conservator of Christianity, and the witness to the integrity of the Scriptures and to the understanding of their contents."

—This is what the Christian says about it. We cannot testify as to the "large proportion," but we have seen the original of the picture in more than one school: "In a large proportion of the Sunday-schools one will find the teachers and scholars each sitting with a 'Lesson Paper' or 'Quarterly' in their hands. From it they first read the lesson, then the teacher looks on his paper and reads a question, and the pupil looks on his paper and reads an answer to it; and this goes around the class until the lesson is finished. And both class and teacher frequently give evidence that they knew little about the lesson before they commenced, and they probably know but little more when they are through with it."

—The Christian Herald quotes our words concerning the oft-repeated command to keep the Sabbath, and our statement that we should do so, until we should find better authority than the ten commandments, and says: "Yes, we further find a very explicit command, often repeated, for shedding the blood of bulls and goats, and offering them [?] on the altar [sic] of burnt offering, shall we also obey it? If not, why not?" Will the Herald please tell us which one of the ten commandments it is that entails any such practice? Stick to the text brother. We fear that the Herald took up theology too early. It should have received a little more discipline in the study of the grammar and the spelling book.

—The Texas Advocate says: "Very few professors of religion systematically read their Bibles. About all they know about religion is gained from the preacher, and when they hear a sermon only once or twice a month, their souls have to live on short rations. If each pastor could persuade his members to read their Bibles regularly, he could more easily induce them to erect family altars and attend prayer and class-meetings. The want of the church is a membership in vital and intelligent sympathy with the religion they profess. In theory they say the Bible is a message to men from their heavenly Father, but they treat that book with far less respect than they pay their county paper, and study its pages with less interest than they display over the columns of the weekly prices current."