p. 670 | News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 42.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—It is said that in London over 1,000,000 of its 4,000,000 never attend church. In Glasgow, 200,000 out of 700,000 neglect public worship.

—There are twenty-four woman's missionary societies in the Presbyterian Churches of the world. They contributed last year upward of $280,000.

—The students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, are summoned to recitations by a large gong which once did service in a Buddhist temple.

—A new mission to the Jews is about to be established in Tiberias by the Free Church of Scotland, to be called 'The Sea of Galilee Medical Mission.'

—The translation of the New Testament into the language of the Valley of Cashmere has been completed by Rev. T. R. Wade, missionary of the English Church Missionary Society.

—A letter from a missionary in India states that Rev. W. D. Boggs, of the American Baptist Mission, has baptized 616 persons since January 1, making a total of 944 in eighteen months.

—Dr. Greene, missionary to Constantinople, said in the recent meeting of the American Board in Columbus, O., that the gifts of the native Christians in Turkey, in support of their churches, averaged last year an equivalent of from ten to twenty days' labor for male and female.

—An English Presbyterian journal laments that while there is a strong sentiment among the churches of that denomination in favor of sending missionaries to China in increasing numbers, attempts to promote mission work among the teeming population of London meets with a 'cold shoulder.'

—At the recent conference of the Evangelical Alliance, at Copenhagen, Dr. Christlieb presented the following picture of the religious, or rather irreligious, condition of Germany: In Berlin, with a population of 1,000,000, only 20,000 or 2 per cent. attend public worship. In Hamburg, with nearly 400,000 people, only 5,000 attend. In certain districts of North Germany there are suicides at the rate of thirty to forty a week. The study of infidel books he represented as very common.

—A remarkable instance is afforded by the case of the new saint, who, it appears, is about to be added to the Wesleyan calendar. The Wesleyans at Wirksworth are going to remove from their old chapel where Elizabeth Evans, the prototype of 'Dinah Morris' in 'Adam Bede,' preached for many years. The new chapel, which is to be called Bede Memorial Chapel, is 'to be erected to the glory of God and in memory of Elizabeth Evans, immortalized as 'Dinah Morris' by George Eliot in her novel of 'Adam Bede.'' The privilege of canonization has passed from the church to the novelists.—Bulletin.

—The New York Observer utters the following plain but truthful words: 'The very last people in the world to oppose secret societies ought to be Roman Catholics. They have the 'Order of Jesuits,' the most secret, unscrupulous, and wicked conspiracy of bad men the world ever saw. Kings have expelled them en masse from their kingdoms. They are enemies of society, in league with ignorance, superstition, and crime, and their offenses form part of the most awful chapters of the history of the human race. There is no secrecy more profound, no obedience to masters more slavish, no wickedness more cheerfully perpetrated, no morality more profligate and infernal, than the Order of Jesuits illustrates in its past career. Yet it is the bulwark of the Romish Church; it puts down one and sets up another at its own sweet will. And Roman Catholics oppose secret societies! Out upon such hypocrisy.'