News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 16.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—It is claimed that Protestant baptisms in Japan average about 400 per month.

—A short time since Rev. C. H. Spurgeon said that till recently he knew by name and by face all the five thousand members of his church.

—An awful result of serpent worship in India is seen in the statement that 22,000 lives are lost annually by the bites of venomous reptiles and wild beasts.

—It is said that every man on the Kansas City police force is a church member. Two of the officers are elders in the church, and any number of them are deacons.

—Union between the northern and southern branches of the Presbyterian Church, at an early day, is confidently predicted by many ministers of those communions.

—A new sect has made its appearance in Finland, Russia, the cardinal tenet of which is the supremacy of the woman in the family. In this respect they resemble the Siberian sect known as Purifiers.

—Rev. E. K. Love, pastor of the First African Baptist Church, Savannah, Ga., has, it is stated, baptized over fourteen hundred persons during his pastorate there, of two and a half years. The church has over 5,000 communicants.

—The tercentenary of the translation of the Bible into Welsh is to be celebrated this year by erecting a memorial to the translator, Bishop Morgan, at St. Asaph, and by establishing a Welsh scholarship for Biblical learning. It is also intended to issue a reprint of Bishop Morgan's Bible, with the Revised Version in a parallel column.

—At a recent meeting of Methodist preachers in San Francisco, several expressed sympathy with the so-called "New Theology," or probation after death. Rev. Dr. Heacock read a paper upon the subject, in which he expressed the opinion that the doctrine is false and that its practical effect, wherever received, "is to prevent conversions and block the progress of the gospel." Its general acceptance, he thought, would bring a moral blight upon the land.

—The German inhabitants of the Baltic are mostly Lutherans, and the determination of the Russian Government seems to be to compel religious conformity. The Minister of the Interior has been authorized to suspend or banish Lutheran pastors without any judicial inquiry. Some fifty preachers in Livonia have been warned, and as many in Courland. In Esthonia several pastors' wives have been marked out for punishment for holding missionary meetings.