The Signs of the Times by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Mar 4, 1889

The Signs of the Times.

By Editor

OAKLAND, CAL., SECOND-DAY, MARCH 4, 1889.

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THE income of the four great missionary societies of Great Britain and of the British and Foreign Bible Society is in amount equal to the money spent on drink in England for sixty days. If the 30,000,000 Protestant church-members of the world would give one cent each day of the year, over $100,000,000 would be in the mission treasuries.

THE Boston Pilot (Catholic) says: "Hoffman's Directory gives the total of American Catholics at 8,157,676, but says in every diocese there are parishes that fail to report. We believe that the estimate made recently by a careful Catholic writer in the New York Sun, and which reckons the Catholics of the United States at a scant 12,000,000, touches the true figure more nearly than the other estimate given above."

IF some of our diseased meat dealers were treated as they were in England in the sixteenth century, we would have less trouble perhaps, in that direction. It is related that a butcher who had sold diseased meat was forced to ride about London with "his face toward the horse's tail, with half a lamb before and another behind, and veal and calf borne before him upon a pole, raw." Men who sold decaying fish were put into the pillory with the decaying fish around their necks. Who will say that the punishment was too severe for men who literally poisoned their customers for gain. There would be some long processions of butchers nowadays, though, in some of our large cities, if San Francisco is a type and the Daily Examiner's reports are anywhere near correct.

BROTHER LARUE writes from Hongkong under date of January 15, as follows:—

"The work here is very encouraging at present; those that were the most bitter at first show a different spirit now. One of the old missionaries who has been here in the work seven years, now sees that he must keep God's law. He is going up to the Island of Formosa to be gone till June, and then he goes to our college at Healdsburg to spend at least six months. He wants to know what time the summer vacation commences. Please write me so that I can write to him about it, as he wants to take that time in going. A soldier has also, I believe, been truly converted. He leaves here for London next month. He says he will take the good news to his mother. A captain from Australia, has likewise embraced the truth. This is a migrating people, and we will never know in this life what good has been done."

IN an article which Dr. T. L. Cuyler has in a recent number of the N. Y. Evangelist, it is stated that Brooklyn, the so-called "city of churches," is anything but a Christian or church-going city. Of a population of 800,000, 280,000 are Roman Catholics, of which seven-eighths attend church. About 100,000 attend the Protestant services more or less regularly. Making a fair estimate of little children, invalids, mothers kept at home by little ones, sailors and travelers, there are on any given Sunday, "at least 110,000 who cannot attend any place of worship. After making these deductions, there would remain 280,000 'outsiders' who are brought under no direct religious influence. This is a fearfully large number." But the Doctor solaces himself in the fact that Brooklyn is not as bad as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco. It will be a long time to the millennium at this rate.

THE Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette says: "Progress often seems slow to contemporaries, but even in the case of the great dominion of India, at the present rate of evangelization, the entire Empire will be Christianized within one hundred and fifty years." And asks: "How many centuries did it take to Christianize Europe?" That is rather a difficult question. It took but little more than five centuries to Papalize Europe, but, as it has never yet been Christianized, in any proper sense of the term, and as the existence of the Papacy seems, at least, to forbid the idea that it ever will be, the difficulties of the question are insurmountable to uninspired minds.

THE Nashville Christian Advocate well says that "when a professed Christian prefers the Christ of a Unitarian novelist to the Christ of St. John, it will be well for him to take a rest in novel reading and begin a fresh course in the gospels." Indeed the Advocate might have suggested with propriety, that it is well for a Christian under any circumstances to touch novel-reading very lightly, and spend much time in the study of the Scriptures. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world," is a piece of advice as good to-day as when given by the apostle more than eighteen hundred years ago, and it leaves little room for the novels over which "society" goes wild.

WE have received from Hon. F. G. Adams, secretary, the sixth Biennial Report of the Kansas State Historical Society, covering the period from January 18, 1887, to November 19, 1888. During this time, over 12,000 volumes have been added. The whole number in the library at this time is 48,305. The published statistics of the libraries of the country show that the library of the Kansas Historical Society is the largest historical library west of the Mississippi River, and the largest but one west of the Alleghany mountains. The class of books is chiefly the history of the early struggles of that enterprising State.

DR. T. J. BARNARDO, of London, sends out a circular letter, appealing for help to support his "Homes" for outcast children. For twenty-two years, Dr. Barnardo has been engaged in this work—a work of love and faith to him. He has rescued from the vice, filth, and slums of London many little waifs, which have been trained for usefulness, and bid fair to become useful men and women. For most of these, homes have been found in America, chiefly in Canada. Most of the little ones thus rescued were taken literally from the streets and slums, having neither father or mother to care for them. The "Homes" are supported by contribution from those in sympathy with Dr. Barnardo's work. The little ones now under his charge number 3,000. It is a noble work. May God bless the doctor in his efforts.