News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 9, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 38.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—A Baptist Church has recently been organized in the city of Mexico.

—The Baptists are about to build a college in East Oakland. Twelve acres of land, valued at $20,000, have been donated for a building site.

—There are twenty-three Jesuit colleges in the United States, with nearly 6,000 students. St. Ignatius College, in San Francisco, has 702 students, the largest number of any.

—The leader of the Spiritualist camp-meeting now in session at Alameda, Cal., says that Ingersoll is "John the Baptist preparing the way" for Spiritualism. The reckless blasphemer is a fit herald for their doctrines.

—Rev. Mr. Cornforth, a Wesleyan minister of Nottingham, England, has resigned because he cannot pledge himself to a definite and positive belief in the absolutely endless suffering of the unsaved.

—Richmond, Va., Dispatch.

—A committee of Catholic theologians has been holding sessions for the past four weeks in Maryland. Their report will furnish the basis of the work for the coming Plenary Council, which will deal with questions of discipline in the Catholic Church in this country.

—There is one neighborhood in Mercer County, Pa., where the much-talked-of "temperance wave" has not yet made a very deep impression. The Presbyterian minister there has been compelled to resign his pastorate for preaching a temperance sermon, the principal financial supporters of the congregation having withdrawn their subscriptions.

—Dr. Tombes in an article in the Herald of Truth, on the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," says that "the first day of the week is recognized in the 'Teaching' as the Lord's day." Which goes to show that so able a critic as the good doctor may be so blinded by the force of habit and popular custom as to state for a fact that which does not exist.

—In a Sabbath-school class in which the lesson touched upon the promise of Herod to the daughter of Herodias, the teacher asked whether it was true that Herod was obliged to keep his vow, when it would lead to the beheading of John the Baptist. "I guess if she had asked for his own head, Herod would not have felt himself obliged to keep it," replied a bright boy of ten. Not a bad answer.

—A correspondent of the London News, writing from Abyssinia, says that the native priests there generally lead a life of gross immorality, using the confessional as a means of gratifying their gross desires, including that for liquor. At weddings and funerals the priest is always the most drunk and noisy. The Catholic Monitor also states that intemperance has of late years been fearfully on the increase among the Catholics of San Francisco. "Like priest, like people."

—In the course of a lecture on "Education," Bishop Foss said concerning the idea that cultivation of the intellect alone tends to make a man a Christian: "I don't believe that the multiplication table can convert a man, nor can metaphysics, or the knowledge of conic sections. No intellectual culture is any warrant against crime. I suggest the need of some higher culture. Contrary to the commonly received opinion, I apprehend, save in the lower ranks of society and grades of education, the training of the intellect has but little tendency to lessen crime. Statistics show that a large number of criminals are illiterates, not because they are illiterates, but because they are unemployed in consequence of their illiteracy."

—Dr. Horton, of Oakland, reviewed one of Ingersoll's lectures, in the course of which he made the following good point on the infidel's favorite saying that "God would not give a man a mind, and damn him for thinking:" "Notice where Mr. Ingersoll, who makes his appeal to thought, places himself. 'I the Almighty God have spoken, Mr. Ingersoll, why do you not believe any word and obey?' 'I am an independent thinker.' 'What are you thinking about?' 'My mind is full of the great questions of the origin and destiny of the human race.' 'But what do you know about those questions?' 'Nothing.' 'Of what then is your capacious mind so full?' 'Nothing!' An empty head wedded to a brazen tongue are the essential factors in a first-class atheist."