p. 655 | News and Notes by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 20, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 41.

News and Notes.

By Editor

FOR THE WEEK ENDING AUGUST 13.

RELIGIOUS.

—On application of the Sunday Observance Society of Chicago, Judge Horton has issued an injunction against baseball playing on Sunday.

—The mayor of Ottawa, Ill., has determined to stop the street meetings of the Salvation Army, and to this end recently caused the arrest of the entire army, consisting of forty men and women, who are determined to resist the mayor's order to cease street meetings.

—A suit between the Joseph Smith Mormons and the Salt Lake wing of the church for possession of certain church property at Independence, Mo., was recently decided in favor of the Smith organization, and the defeated party have taken the case up to the Court of Appeals.

—The Occident says, "We believe that if transportation companies would give labor the Sunday of rest due them according to the law of God, there would be less discontent and a better feeling between labor and capital." Please tell us what law of God says anything about "a Sunday of rest."

—Bishop J. M. Thoburn, who has charge of the Methodist missionary work in India, is now in this country, and recently accepted an invitation to rest a few days at the Seventh-day Adventist Sanitarium at Battle Creek, Mich. July 30 he delivered an address in the S. D. A. Tabernacle at that place.

—The religious bodies of Northfield, Minn., including Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists, began July 15 to pray for rain, and, as no rain has come in answer to their petitions, they have about decided to give it up. Within about 100 miles square there has been no rain since the middle of June, and very little at that time.

—A London dispatch of the 8th inst. says: "Lord Salisbury, as president of the British Association for the current year, delivered his inaugural address before a brilliant gathering in Oxford to-night. Professor Huxley, in seconding a vote of thanks to the new president, declared that Lord Salisbury has set the seal of his authority upon the doctrine of evolution."

—Nearly 400 American pilgrims attended mass on the 8th inst., in the Consistory at Rome. The pope gave the pilgrims his blessing from the altar. The Rev. Father Poncelli, of Brooklyn, N. Y., presented his holiness with $4,000 in Peter's pence, and other large sums were presented by the pilgrims. The pope spoke in French, and blessed various religious objects belonging to the pilgrims.

—The sextons of the leading churches of this city are urging their right to a summer vacation, setting forth the importance of their calling. One of them, in asserting the dignity of the position, says, "We are not laborers." Inasmuch as every servant of the church is supposed to be a laborer, it would seem that the sexton who is too dignified to be reckoned in that class ought to have a permanent vacation.

—Governor Pennoyer, of Oregon, persistently advocates a law prohibiting the railroad companies from issuing personal passes to anyone. Yet he travels on a pass himself, and proposes to do so as long as others do. That is the principle maintained by many Sunday-law advocates: "The right to rest demands a law of rest for all." In other words, they cannot keep Sunday unless everyone else is compelled to do so.

—The State Department at Washington has received numerous communications from missionary societies and religious bodies, asking that full protection be given to missionaries in the Orient. Replies have been sent stating that full instructions with regard to the protection of missionaries have been sent to our representatives in Asia, and that no fear need be felt that any harm will come to any of them. In case of a religious outbreak the missionaries will be sent aboard the war ships of the United States.

—In San Francisco, every Sunday afternoon, a prominent Baptist minister speaks in the Metropolitan Temple to large audiences, on the general theme of "Catholicism a Foe to the Public Schools, and the Powerful Enemy of Religious Liberty and the American Republic." Notwithstanding the prominence of these meetings, and the great interest of the public in the subjects under discussion, it is a notable fact that the reporters' tables are always unoccupied. For some reason the leading city papers make no mention of these able and instructive expositions of Rome's crafty designs.

—A riot against Protestant missions in Quebec was the cause of great excitement on the night of the 8th inst. The mob, said to number about 5,000, first attacked a newly established French Baptist mission, occupied at the time by five missionaries, three gentlemen and two ladies. The doors and windows were broken in, and the shower of stones continued until the mob was driven off by the police. Then an attack was made on the French Anglican mission, which was also badly battered with stones. Thence the excited crowd rushed on to the Salvation Army barracks, which was also considerably damaged. No arrests were made.