p. 319 | News and Notes by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 19, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 20.

News and Notes.

By Editor

FOR THE WEEK ENDING MARCH 12.

RELIGIOUS.

-The twenty-sixth annual convention of the California State Sunday School Association will convene at Stockton, April 10.

-A New York dispatch says that five parties of Utah Mormon missionaries, sixty in all, have recently sailed from that port for Europe.

-Zion's Herald says that "Bishop Vincent abolished the color line in Oklahoma, and distributed the colored charges and people under the superintendence of the presiding elders."

-Three daughters of Joseph Schench, who reside in the village of Sanborn, N. Y., ten miles east of the Niagara bridge, are said to have become insane from attending Spiritualist seances.

-The Congressional Record makes quite frequent mention of petitions from different sections of the country in support of the joint resolution to amend the preamble to the Constitution by inserting a recognition of the Deity.

-In Modesto, Cal., on the 4th inst., five young Chinamen presented to the Methodist Church a red card bearing the following request in Chinese characters: "We, the undersigned, pray for Christian instruction, and desire to be received at Christ's holy door."

-Rev. W. Kitashima, a young Japanese student of divinity, who graduated from the Bible class of the Oakland, Cal., Unitarian Church some years ago, and then went to Harvard University, has accepted an invitation to preside over the Unitarian Church at Vineland, N. J.

-A St. Louis dispatch of the 5th inst. says: "The two great bodies of Methodists met in a joint love feast and communion service to-day. Forty or fifty ministers were present, and all united in attesting their joy at the burial of strife and dissension. The meeting was unique in St. Louis, where feelings on the Civil War ran high. The split in Methodism dates back to 1844, when a Southern bishop refused to liberate his slaves at behest of the conference."

-Rev. Father Montgomery, of this city, says of Catholicism that it is "the fountain head of the true faith." It is quite evident that Catholicism cannot be the true Christian faith, for of this Christ is the fountain head. The true Christian Church is but the channel through which runs the stream of truth from the Fountain Head to the world. Any church that is itself the fountain of its faith must necessarily be of human origin, and therefore corrupt, sending forth a corrupt stream. It is impossible for any faith coming from such a fountain to be the "true faith."

-On the Erie Railroad a new order went into effect on the 4th inst., "not to start common freight trains from division terminals from 12 o'clock Saturday night until 12 o'clock Sunday night, running only fast freight, perishable freight, and stock trains, laying off as many switching crews and men in the roundhouses as possible for the day."

-The noted African king, Behanzin, of Dahomey, is a practical Spiritualist. When, in the recent war with the French, he became so pressed that he saw surrender the only means of saving his life, it is said that he summoned his aged mother and said to her: "I am going to surrender to France. My father must know it. You shall see him and tell him." And thereupon he had her beheaded, that her spirit might go as messenger to the dead father. This act of the heathen king may be a little more cruel, but it is no more absurd, than the popular doctrine of spirit consciousness after death, upon which the act was based.

-Rev. B. Nagarkar, of India, a minister of the Brahmo-Somaj, or Reformed Hindu Church, preached in the First Unitarian Church, San Francisco, last Sunday night. His sermon, so far as reported, was very good Unitarianism, inasmuch as it ignored the necessity for any mediation between God and man. He made this true remark, however, which contains in a nutshell the cause of the marked apostasy of the professed Christian Church of to-day: "The orthodox [so called] are to-day tearing the Scriptures apart, and lengthening and widening them to fit the new dispensation." Of course in this work of Scripture manipulation Mr. Nagarkar coincides with the "orthodox," as it opens a new door for his religion.