p. 574 | News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 18, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 36.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—Newsboys are prohibited from crying their papers on Sunday in New Haven, Conn.

—The London Sunday-school Union has issued a call for a season of prayer throughout the world, for Sunday-schools, on October 19th and 20th.

—Members of the Salvation Army to the number of two thousand paraded the streets of Toronto, September 1. One person in the procession was a millionaire, who was recently converted.

—In the M. E. Church Conference at Monterey, Cal., a representative of the Germans reported that the church amongst his nationality is a total abstinence church. A Japanese from the mission in San Francisco was received into the Conference, and reported great prosperity in the mission.

—The Western Watchman, a Catholic journal, says: "Catholics seldom read Catholic books. Pious Catholic literature is an abomination in their sight. Protestants accuse them of not reading the Bible; that is only half the truth. They read neither the Bible nor anything else of a religious character. The majority of our people read their mass prayers and look over the table of sins, and farther into Catholic literature they do not go."

—Rev. Father Prendergast, of San Francisco, has been reviewing the difficulty in the High School, caused by certain statements about the Catholic Church. He condemned Swinton's history as untrue. Concerning the gross immoralities charged upon certain popes, he indignantly stated that those popes were not as bad as their enemies claim. Perhaps not; but if some of them were only one-fourth as bad as they are represented, they were human monsters.

—The Central Presbyterian treats its readers to this bit of news: "The Church was organized after the fall, and Adam was the first person admitted into it. He started the church of Redeemed Humanity on the Presbyterian model. If he had been a Presbyterian elder before this time, he never would have fallen." This is only equaled by the little girl who, when she learned in Sunday-school that Jesus was a Jew, indignantly stated that she knew better, because God was a Presbyterian.

—The St. Louis Globe-Democrat says: "The territory of Russian Siberia, one and a half times as large as the United States, has belonged to Russia three centuries, yet of the 4,000,000 inhabitants nearly one-half are still pagan. Paganism is fostered by the home Government. The pagan priests are allowed to collect and burn the copies of the Bible with which the missionaries supply the converts, and no missionary may baptize without the authority of the pagan civil authorities, who are allowed to do most anything to drive Christianity from the country."

—Mr. Moncure D. Conway has resigned the Unitarian pulpit in which he had charge. He complained that the London Unitarians gave him the cold shoulder. The Christian Life, the organ of the Unitarian body, gives us the reason for this, that he "openly rejected Christianity, discarded the Christian name," and held views of the universe virtually atheistical. This is a very good reason for a body of Christians getting rid of a minister. Our Unitarian friends have done well in getting rid of Mr. Conway. But they would have done far better had they never been obliged to get rid of him. A pronounced agnostic and a suspected atheist in a professedly Christian pulpit is not a sight edifying to men or angels. It is a kind of liberality, though, that must please old Satan.—Christian at Work.

—The Christian at Work advocates the dropping of Sunday evening services, and the idea is being discussed in its columns. A paragraph from a minister who favors the plan, strikes us as being to the point. He says: "In case it seems best to keep up the second service, that it may be made interesting and popular, the preaching should be extemporaneous. Many will come to a second service to listen to a glowing unwritten presentation of the claims of the gospel who would not come to hear a second written sermon. The church is calling for speakers, not readers; for a return to the primitive Christly and apostolic method of speaking directly to the people on the sublime themes of inspiration." Query: If that would work well for an evening service, why should not the "Christly and apostolic method of speaking" be adopted for the morning service also?