RELIGIOUS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 3, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 34.

RELIGIOUS.

By Editor

—Oregon papers speak of a traveling preacher and lecturer who passes as a Presbyterian and yet works the name and fame of Dr. Robert Collyer, the noted Unitarian minister of New York.

—Some of the Methodists talked quite loudly about withdrawing their exhibit from the World's Fair if the gates were opened on Sunday, but now that the decision is finally made to open the grounds on that day, they have decided not to withdraw.

—Rev. George S. Mott, D.D., chairman of the Sabbath observance committee of the Synod of New Jersey, has accepted the position of acting president of the American Sabbath Union, to supply the vacancy occasioned by the death of Elliott F. Shepard.

—Professor Chas. A. Briggs, lately suspended from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church by the General Assembly, does not propose to stop preaching. He discoursed before an audience of 5,000 at the Auditorium in Chicago on the 25th inst., on "Church Unity."

—The successor of Father Mollinger, the Pittsburg priest who in his lifetime acquired considerable notoriety as a faith healer, is a negro, and is maintaining the reputation of his predecessor. A dispatch of the 25th inst. gives "Brother Day" credit for five miraculous cures.

—Spiritualist authorities claim that Italy is placing itself at the head of the Spiritualist movement. Why not? Prophecy connects very closely both the work and the fate of the "beast" and the false prophet. See Rev. 13; 19:20; 20:10. As their united work is at hand, it is fitting that their headquarters should be coming together.

—Dr. Talmage has announced that the floating debt of $110,000 against the Brooklyn Tabernacle has been provided for, and he will remain as pastor. But the Presbyterian Review states that this indebtedness was cleared off by the willingness of the creditors to accept twenty-three cents on the dollar, and that a mortgage of $125,000 remains, secured by insurance on Dr. Talmage's life.

—The publishers of a religious paper entitled the Christian Standard are desirous of dropping their patent medicine and other advertisements of a questionable character. But they announce that it will be necessary to procure 5,000 new subscribers to replace the financial loss. It seems too bad that a religious paper should continue to be run by an acknowledged "questionable" financial support; but there are many of them that evidently do exist by the help of that class of advertising.

—Religious fighting is reported in Burmah. The Moslems were preparing for a religious celebration, and as they were about to sacrifice a cow near the Hindoo temple, the British magistrate sent an order forbidding it. The Moslems began stoning the police. The magistrate, who had been wounded in the conflict, ordered the police to fire. Twenty Mahommedans fell dead, and several more were wounded. The military was called, and further hostilities were threatened at last reports.

—The Boys' Brigade is one of the popular fads connected with the modern "form of godliness," and the absurdity of a military organization for the furtherance of a peaceful work is demonstrated by a Missouri Sunday school man. In order to become more efficient in his work he advised his boys to join the Boys' Brigade, and he himself enlisted in the militia that he might become better qualified to drill them. When Satan fails to keep men from professing to be Christians, his next game is to deceive them as to what Christianity is.

—In Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, fourteen congregations of different denominations have united to form an East End Union Sunday School Teachers' Association. The president is an Episcopalian, the secretary, a German Reformed, while the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist Churches are represented on the committee. The sessions were held in churches of different denominations, and the program was so arranged that the teachers' meetings, say in the Baptist Church, are taught by a Lutheran, addressed by a Methodist, while prayers are offered by a Presbyterian and a United Presbyterian, an Episcopalian presiding.

—Monsignor Satolli thinks the Catholic journals of the United States would exert more power if they were associated together, and still more if in some practical way they could be connected with the Catholic journals of Europe. Satolli's mission to this country is mainly that of a peacemaker and unifier of the church, which was becoming quite discordant, not only in regard to the school question, but because of the personal ambition of several prominent individuals. After unification here, his next point is to more securely connect the growing structure with the Old World, and he seems to thoroughly understand his mission.