p. 279 | Religious Miscellany by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1875

Religious Miscellany.

By Editor

—Bishop Haven of the Methodist Church is an advocate of woman's suffrage. Recent ly he made a speech at Boston in favor of it.

—Joseph Curry, who says he is Christ, and not long ago was driven out of Georgia for forming a free-love colony, has started a new religious society in Springfield, Mass. A negress is worshiped by him and his few fol lowers as queen of earth and heaven. He and this woman now represent themselves as fasting forty days and forty nights, and they have nearly starved themselves in a rigorous observance of the rite. They are terribly emaciated, and so weak that they can hardly walk. Curry says that at the end of forty days they will be transported to heaven in a chariot of fire.

—The Jewish Messenger thus bewails the sad condition of the Jews in this country:—

"To be plain and explicit, our dissention and want of union, or even co-operation, threatens to uproot everything we have pre served, and place in its stead a species of Judaism hardly beneficial to the present gen eration, and subversive of all that was wont to be Israel's pride and boast—one people, one in preserving our purity of race without any admixture, one to maintain intact our laws regarding marriage, divorces, burial of the dead, and other matters."

—The Boston Congregational Association, has started a Ministerial Bureau for the pur pose of securing positions for unemployed ministers and of furnishing ministers for vacant churches. Thus religion is coming to be an article of merchandize to be bought and sold.

FOREIGN.

—The Jews are endeavoring to raise a fund for the purpose of encouraging industrial, mercantile, and agricultural pursuits among the Jews of the Holy Land. To assist them in acquiring the requisite land, establishing schools, and in other ways promoting Jewish interests there.

—The missions for the conversion of the Jews are almost an entire failure. Of all people they are the hardest to reach. There is in Philadelphia a mission to that people, but not long since some one moved its dis bandment, as being quite fruitless so far, and utterly unpromising. Last year the English society spent over $175,000 in its work, and gained only eighteen converts! This is about as well as it has done before.

—An attack was made, May 1, upon the American Methodist Episcopal church in Kuikiang, in consequence of a belief among the natives that children were maltreated by missionaries.

BERLIN, June 23.—The German Govern ment is preparing a parliamentary measure prohibiting religious processions. This is aimed at the Catholics.

—The Spanish Catholics have shown their teeth, in a futile way, by seizing upon a number of Protestant books consigned to an American resident of Santander. The act has been brought to the notice of Minister Cushing, who will see that it is redressed The spirit of the old serpent will still show itself whenever there is a chance.

—The Roman Catholics have now over one hundred missionaries at work in Africa.

—R. Pearsall Smith, the American Revi valist is creating about as great an excite ment on the continent of Europe, as Moody is in England. Our deliberate conviction is that the apparent good effect of all these spas modic movements will be but temporary, after which the people will sink lower than before, the same as it was after the similar excitement of 1858.

—A writer thus describes the state of re ligion in Italy:—

"A profound indifference prevails. The churches are open every day, from morning until noon, but, oh, how cold and solitary! A few priests reading prayers, a dozen people kneeling here and there, almost as many lazy beggars at the door, a monk or two with cowl and beads—what were these great ignorant fellows made for?—One or two ladies at the confessional, and a dozen tourists with their guide-books:—this is the unvaried scene, the summary for Sunday and the rest of the week. There are, in general, no seats; there is but little sermonizing."

—The tribunal of Castro Villari, before which the case of a priest, Vitale, was brought, who wished to marry, has just deci ded the civil marriage of a priest in Italy to be perfectly legal and valid. This decision is a very important one, and is still another loosing of the bands which have bound the Italian Government to Rome.