News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 39.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Sweden is said to have but three Roman Catholic Churches.

—At a recent meeting of "Christian workers" in a three days' convention, in New York, Rev. A. B. Simpson argued that with implicit faith in God, and earnest prayer to him, diseases might be cured without the aid of a physician.

—Ingersoll refused to discuss with Elder W. A. Jarrell, giving as a reason that he would not debate with a tramp minister. Mr. Jarrell is well accredited as a Baptist minister. But, query: Has a tramp minister no rights which a tramp infidel is bound to respect?

—Rev. Dr. Sankey, of Rochester, N. Y., who has just returned from the Pan-Presbyterian Council in Belfast, makes this statement: "I believe the Presbyterian Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland are tending toward ritualism very rapidly. This is especially so in the Scottish churches, surprising as it may seem."

—A missionary of the American Sunday-school Union found a church thirty years old, in Missouri, meeting in a good house of worship, well appointed as to comforts, with a large congregation, but which had never had a Sunday-school. While there was preaching to parents and adults, the children were hunting, fishing, etc.

—Rev. Mr. Ross, a Presbyterian missionary in China, has been successful in translating the four Gospels into the Corean language. Corea is one of the youngest of the mission fields. Until recently it was an inaccessible country. The Gospels are eagerly read by the people, who are loud in their praises of the wonderful Book.

—Dr. Davis, writing from Kioto, Japan, says: "One of the largest Buddhist temples in the city has a school of several hundred young priests connected with it; and the priests have recently bought one hundred and twenty copies of the New Testament and some commentaries, and have put the school at work studying the Bible every day. What will come of it I do not know, but the priest who bought the books told the bookseller that they were bound to see what Christianity was, and if it was better than Buddhism, they were going to adopt it."

—Dr. C. A. Bartol is the Baptist clergyman of Boston, who said that Emerson never sinned, and that to speak against him was to sin against the Holy Ghost. From the Boston Traveler's report of his first sermon after vacation, we extract the following: "Basing his discourse upon the narrative of Elijah in his cave in the wilderness, the preacher discussed the proper aims and results of the vacation season. The true man does not rest for the sake of rest, or for love of vacation more than of ordinary duty, but only as a means of gaining strength for renewed effort. Everybody ought to have his cave where he goes often alone, where he can have no associate but God, where he can render his account. For the Judgment day is not away off. It is when we honestly render an account with our conscience." And that is called a religious discourse! People who are fed on such stuff are to be pitied.