p. 703 | News and Notes by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 11, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 44.

News and Notes.

By Editor

FOR THE WEEK ENDING SEPTEMBER 4.

RELIGIOUS.

—Dr. H. S. Venable, of Virginia, and six ladies, missionaries to China, left San Francisco last week on the steamer City of Peking.

—A convention of the National Reform Association has been called to meet in the First United Presbyterian Church, Alleghany, Pa., on the evening of November 14.

—Bishop Kephart, who has recently visited the mission of the United Brethren on the west coast of Africa, says that the practice of circumcision is very general among all the African tribes of that coast. It is practiced among the converts to Christianity as well as among the pagans.

—The governors of the provinces of Kuban and Stavropol, Russia, have given orders to close Baptist meeting houses within their jurisdiction. In the province inhabited by the Kuban Cossacks the Baptists have recently made a considerable number of conversions from the orthodox church.

—Of the 800 policemen employed by the city of Chicago, 600 are Roman Catholics. And the Cynosure gives this fact as the probable reason why a man and his wife, who attempted to preach the gospel in the streets, were arrested and fined, and why the roughs who wantonly assaulted the woman were not molested by the police.

—When Satolli was in Cincinnati recently a police officer was kept near him all the time, lest some evil should befall him. This was at the earnest solicitation of a priest, who said, "There is no telling what some sectarian crank may attempt to do." He evidently judges "sectarian cranks" by the fanatical mobs of his own persuasion.

—It is interesting to note what hard things the religious papers are continually saying about the people and the government of this nation, which most of these same papers contend (in the light of the Supreme Court decision) is a "Christian nation." This assumption is supposed to wonderfully exalt the nation, but the daily exposition of flagrant wickedness in almost every corner shows that the general appellation of "Christian" to it all is but a degradation of Christianity.

—The Interior says, "It is hard to see how a law-abiding and conscientious chaplain [of the army] can keep silent concerning the liquor nuisance at the posts." And it is still harder to see how a "conscientious" minister of the gospel can be an army chaplain at all. They have to carry a military rank, which demands a subservient recognition on the part of the rank and file of the army, to whose special welfare they are nominally supposed to minister. Thus the whole situation is incongruous in the light of the Scriptures.

—The Christian Statesman of the 26th ult. says: "There has been this week the usual number of electoral revolutions in the Sabbathless Spanish republics south of us." The reason they are "Sabbathless" is because they know only the spurious papal institution supported by civil law,—the same that the American Sabbath Union is endeavoring to enforce in the United States by civil law. The Statesman ought to be able to see in these "Sabbathless Spanish republics" some of the evil effects of civil law religion—but it doesn't.