News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 24, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 28.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The Banner of Light places the number of Spiritualists in this country at eleven million.

—It is said that the Mormon hierarchy had in the field last year more missionaries than the American Board.

—Archbishop Gibbons, of Baltimore, Md., recently administered the sacrament of confirmation to 700 children in the cathedral.

—A Wesleyan Methodist in England, a few weeks ago, in forwarding an offering to the Mission Fund, said: "I believe the resurrection is very near, and I would not like Christ to find me with much earthly coin."

—In sixty-eight years the American Bible Society has issued 43,892,631 volumes of the Scriptures, in more than eighty languages and dialects. It has also prepared the entire Bible in raised letters for the blind.

—Mr. Lathbury, pastor of the M. E. Church at Bakerville, Conn., says in a letter to the Christian at Work, "My experience is that fully three-fourths of the church members need converting to the religion of Christ."

—The Christian at Work is in favor of making Good Friday a legal holiday. It certainly is consistent. There is no reason why Good Friday and all other days of Catholic appointment should not be recognized as well as Sunday.

—Mr. Moody is reported, by a London paper, to have said that, upon returning to England after an absence of eight years, he found that nineteen-twentieths of the backsliders from the ranks of his former converts had been led away by the public house.

—In the African section of the Hermannsburg Mission, which embraces nineteen congregations in Natal and twenty-one in Transvaal, there were baptized in the year 1883, 992 persons. The whole number of converts in these congregations is now 8,632, and 544 applicants for baptism are still waiting.

—At the last annual meeting of the China Inland Mission, Mr. Stevenson, one of the society's earliest missionaries, said: "China is now fully open to the gospel; more so, indeed, than some European countries, or even some parts of Ireland." During the past year the mission has sent out thirty new missionaries.

—Dr. William Hayes Ward, editor of the Independent, is about to head an expedition to the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, to make a survey of that region, with a view to exploration and excavation in the interest of Assyriology and the illustration of Bible language and antiquities. The cost of the expedition is to be borne by Miss Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, of New York. It will be known as the Wolfe expedition.

—As a result of the efforts of Dr. John C. Berry, of Maine, who for twelve years has been a medical missionary in Japan, a movement has been inaugurated in Philadelphia for establishing a medical college, a hospital, and a training school for nurses in that country. Prominent Japanese Christians promise to provide real estate and buildings if an endowment to support professors and purchase apparatus is raised in the United States.

—In a report of church doings in New Haven, Ct., we read that "the sales of the seats in the Church of the Redeemer amounted to $8,500" this year, being in excess of last year. This seems almost like a satire, when we remember that one of the proofs which the Redeemer gave of the divinity of his mission was that the poor had the gospel preached to them, and that of himself he said that he had not where to lay his head. It does seem as though the name of that church ought to be changed.

—The Christian Union says that it would "be glad to see the Christian Church so broad in the administration of its discipline as to admit to its membership friends who do not believe in the sacrament of baptism and the Lord's Supper." Why not say that it would be glad to see those admitted who do not believe in Christ? If one does not believe in the memorials which Christ commanded to be observed, how much does he lack of not believing in Christ? This is called progression. It reminds us of the soldier who, when asked concerning the movements of the army to which he was attached, replied that they were "advancing backwards, and the enemy was retreating upon them."

—"General" Booth, of the Salvation Army, made a speech a short time ago, concerning the future plans of the army, in which he said: "Whatever takes place in the future, you may depend upon it we shall be there; and even at the battle of Armageddon, our soldiers will be amongst the foremost." We would not have ventured to say as much ourselves, but we are not inclined to doubt the General's words. The reader will remember from reading Rev. 16 that the armies are gathered to the battle of Armageddon at the instigation of the spirits of devils, and it has for some time been our opinion that the Salvation Army, and the so-called "holiness bands" of this country, are but feeders for Spiritualism. Mr. Booth spoke more wisely than he knew.

—The Independent says: "Indeed, we do not see why a man cannot be a member of two denominations at the same time, if he wants to, enjoying the fellowship of both, their watch and care, and subject to their discipline." This sentence is worthy of note, as indicating the popular tendency toward a union of all professed Christian bodies. What a man believes is getting more and more to be thought a matter of no consequence, provided he outwardly conforms to the requirements of morality. Bearing this in mind, can any one fail to see that in order to effect a union of church and State, it is not necessary that the State single out any particular denomination as the recipient of its favors, but that it pledge itself to maintain certain dogmas common to them all? There can be no doubt but that such an event is near at hand.

—We find in the Chronicle a brief report of a sermon preached by an Elder Pattee before the Y. M. C. A. of San Francisco, on the subject of the Sabbath. After declaring that the whole moral law is abolished, the Elder asks why the first day of the week was substituted as the Sabbath. His answer is: "Probably the most important reason consists in the fact that the resurrection of Christ took place on the first day of the week." Not very profound argument, certainly, but if there is no moral law, it doesn't make any difference whether one has a reason for his action or not. Among the new things stated is "the fact that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus on the first day of the week." The descent of the Holy Ghost, it will be remembered, was at Christ's baptism. Probably the Elder's hearers did not think to question his statement, but we are extremely curious to know how he found out that Christ was baptized on Sunday.

—The Examiner (Baptist) of New York, utters a warning note concerning the growing looseness of novel writers, stating that illicit love plays some part in nearly all modern novels, and in many is the very staple of the plot. "The result," it says, "is that the reading of the novels of the day is coming to be a perilous business, if one has any desire to keep his mind free from such contaminating influences as make the French a thing to be shunned like a pestilence." It further says: "The majority of the readers of books are the members of our Christian churches; bad books will not long be published if they find no readers; does it not follow, therefore, that the novels dealing with libidinous passion cannot retain their present popularity without the complicity of those who are exhorted to seek 'whatsoever things are pure'?" This is the most serious indictment that we have seen brought against the popular churches and church members; and it is all the more strong because the Examiner does not give it as an indictment, but as a simple statement of a well-known fact.

—The Pacific Methodist says: "We have some teachers and preachers in this country, professional revivalists, who offer religion to the people in homeopathic doses in gelatine capsules to hide the bitterness of repentance—a godly sorrow for sin. Some of them have, by some new chemical process peculiar to their theological laboratory, discovered a sulphate of religion from which the disgusting and offensive element of repentance has been extracted. Others retain this element, but exhibit the dose in capsules so it will not be offensive to their patients. These doctors and their new nostrums, or with the old medicine for sin-sick souls in capsules, are in demand, particularly in some communities and by certain classes of people. Repentance for sin is the offensive part of religion. If it were not for this, more people would be willing to take religion. In order to popularize religion and make it palatable these doctors have invented new ways of administering it. It is almost impossible for one to know when a patient swallows a dose exhibited in one-grain capsules. It is an easy-going case. No tears are shed, no wry faces made, no effort, no agony; the tiny pellet is gulped down with scarcely an effort at deglutition."