RELIGIOUS | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 4, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 42.

RELIGIOUS.

—It is now claimed that there are 350,000 French Catholics in New England.

—In the new State of Washington there are seventy-five Congregational Churches, but only three are self-supporting. Thirty missionaries are employed.

—In the Vatican at Rome, is an ancient Hebrew Bible which is said to weigh 325 pounds. In 1512 some Venetian Jews offered Pope Julius its weight in gold for the book, but the offer was refused.

—A correspondent of the Advance says: “There is one county in East Washington which has seventy-one school districts, without any religious privileges whatever.” The name of the county is not given.

—The Venice Gazette says that the sentence of ex-communication was pronounced by the pope in person against the king and queen of Italy, on the occasion of the secret consistory held at the time of the dedication of the Bruno statue in Rome.

—In commenting upon Mr. Moody’s criticism of the churches and seminaries, the N. Y. Examiner says: “There is such a thing as educating the manhood out of a man, and making of him a mere bookworm. There is also such a thing as conceited incompetence rushing in where angels fear to tread. The latter is the more immediate and serious danger that confronts the American churches to-day.”

—The Church Unity Society, which held a meeting in New York recently, has been established about three years, and claims that its efforts so far have been successful. Just what churches have been united we are not told, but suppose they are nearly all united in the one desire for a national Sunday law. Members of the society, besides contributing materially to its support, agree to offer a daily prayer for the unity of Christendom.

—The fact that last year the Catholics received more than three-fourths of all the money appropriated by the government for Indian “contract schools” is accounted for on the ground of the untiring energy of the Romish priest at the head of the Catholic Indian Bureau at Washington. It is expected that General Morgan, the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, will pursue a more-equable policy in the distribution of funds.

—The Mennonites follow the plan of choosing ministers by lot, as the apostles chose Matthias to succeed Judas. The Presbyterian gives the following description of a recent election in Lancaster County, Pa.: “The plan pursued was to place on a table twenty-one Bibles, in one of which had been previously laid a slip of paper. Then the candidates for the position were required to walk around the table, each taking a book. He who secured the one which contained the slip, was declared elected and duly ordained to the work of the ministry.”

—The Buddhist, a weekly paper, has been established at Colombo, Ceylon, by Mr. C. W. Leadbeater, an Englishman, for the purpose of expounding and propagating the Buddhist religion. “Its object,” as is more precisely explained in the prospectus, “is to bring modern European thought into touch with real, practical Buddhism, and to give the leaders of the Southern church a channel through which their ideas may be directly communicated to the English-speaking world.” It therefore enters the field for the conversion of Christendom to Buddhism as a co-laborer of the paper established in Japan for the same purpose.

—The announcement that the Episcopal Convention, sitting in New York, had voted to divide the diocese of California, was premature. The measure had only passed the lower house of the Convention. Then the opposition telegraphed to California for aid, and a prominent Oakland capitalist and politician hurried on to the rescue. He went to work in true political style, giving fine dinners, etc., and the telegraph announces that “the upper house found Eastland’s judicious arguments over his good dinners far more reasonable than those cold button-hole talks in the vestry.” As a consequence, the diocese of California remains intact.

—The Armenian Catholic Church, says the Utica Herald, is the latest comer among religious bodies to this country, and mass was celebrated by an Armenian priest in Worcester, Mass., recently, for the second time in this country. There is quite a colony of Armenians in Worcester; and the Armenian service will be celebrated regularly there. The Armenian Catholics, excepting one schismatic body, do not acknowledge the Papacy, and are as independent as the Greek Catholics, though not as numerous. The priests do not rank high ecclesiastically, and the bishops assume more of the work in other Catholic systems delegated to priests.