RELIGIOUS | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 28, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 33.

RELIGIOUS.

—The Banner of Light speaks familiarly of Sunday as "the Sabbath."

—The pope, it is announced, will shortly issue a formal protest against the French divorce law.

—The Chinese Baptists of Oregon have erected a church, and support a missionary in their native land.

—D. L. Moody, the evangelist, has been engaged by the Young Men's Christian Association to preach in St. Louis this fall.

—The property of the Trinity Church corporation, New York, is said to amount to the enormous sum of $200,000,000.

—The queen of Sweden has given $10,000 towards publishing and distributing gospel tracts among the children of different lands.

—The missionary steamer, Morning Star, was launched at noon, Aug. 6, at Bath, Maine. It is expected that it will sail for Honolulu, Sept. 10.

—It is said that the only Greek Church in America is the one in San Francisco, the only other one, in New York City, having been formally closed, on the 17th inst.

—An eloquent advocate of "the New Theology" has had eight pastorates, and has left seven of the churches with a smaller membership than when he took charge of them.

—A missionary journal states that a man in Canton, China, was led to purchase Christian books by hearing so many curse them. Thus it is that God causes the wrath of man to praise him.

—Colonel Clibbon, of the Salvation Army, has been officially expelled from Neuchatel, Switzerland. The Canton of Berne forbade the meeting on the ground that the exercises were not religious.

—Bishop Brondel, of Montana, has formally excommunicated John Maguire, a theater manager, from the Catholic Church, for bringing Ingersoll into the town of Missoula for a series of lectures.

—The Young Men's Christian Association of the World convened at Berlin on the 20th inst. Emperor William sent a note, apologizing for absence on account of ill health, and invoking the divine blessing on the convention.

—It is reported that another Mormon elder was killed in eastern Tennessee last week, and one who removed the bodies of the elders previously murdered had received warning to leave the State or he would receive like treatment.

—John Williams, the martyr missionary of the Pacific Islands, said: "I dread the arrival of an American ship, for though she may have more missionaries in her cabin, she brings in her hold the death waters of damnation."

—The Freeman's Journal (Catholic) says: "Had even Judas Iscariot gone to the Blessed Mother of the God he had betrayed, and asked, with a contrite heart, her intercession, he would not have been refused." The Catholics seem to regard the Virgin Mary as the special protectress of outrageous criminals.

—It is stated, as an illustration of the power of special prayer offered for the safety of the Moravian vessels, that for 120 years a ship has annually left England for the Moravian mission in the Arctic regions of this continent, and that not a single ship or passenger has been lost by storm, iceberg, or wreck.

—A dispatch of Aug. 18 says: "Six thousand people left Philadelphia yesterday to attend a Spiritualistic camp-meeting at Neshaminy Falls. Fully 1,000 persons drove into the camp from the surrounding country. It was not at all like Sunday. There were various games, diversions, and an orchestra on the lecturer's stand, piping out lively music."

—Mr. Pentecost regards Moody's recent evangelistic work in London as the greatest revival that has occurred in this century. The city was thoroughly canvassed, and so many people were interested that they have the names and addresses of no less than forty thousand persons who visited the inquiry room of the mission. Not less than a thousand churches have undertaken to follow up the work.

—Joseph Cook prophesies a schism in the Congregational Church. He divides the sect into two classes, one of which "takes Plymouth Rock as a corner-stone," and the other "consists of those who float in the tides which rise and fall in the marshes about Plymouth Rock." A third class "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone," might not be so popular as the first two classes, but it would stand longer than the one built on Plymouth Rock.

—The Christian at Work has an article on "Unseen Forces," in which it discusses "The Georgia Wonder," Miss Hurst, mind reading, "muscular divination," etc. Its conclusion is that "we stand on the confines of an unseen world in whose realm laws govern and phenomena become apparent, of which only occasionally we catch a glimpse." By and by Spiritualism will have reached such a stage that no one will be at a loss to account for these phenomena, although even then the majority will ascribe them to the wrong source.