RELIGIOUS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 39.

RELIGIOUS.

—General Booth, the originator and chief commander of the Salvation Army, expects to visit the United States the coming autumn.

—The African M. E. Church of this city have inaugurated a new idea in the laying of church corner stones. They had the corner stone of a new church laid last Sunday, and the ceremony was conducted by the Salvation Army.

—At a meeting of the Presbyterian ministers of San Francisco last week, the question of the Sunday closing of the proposed Midwinter Fair was discussed. One minister declared that the time was ripe to prevent the opening, while the effort is being made to raise funds for the enterprise. But the president of the meeting, Rev. Joseph E. Scott, was candid enough to admit that the movement to close the Fair on Sunday would be indorsed by only a small minority of the community.

—The San Francisco Presbyterian ministers and the Alameda County Christian Endeavor Union are disputing as to who is entitled to the credit of first moving in the matter of the Sunday closing of the proposed Midwinter Fair.

—The fifty-sixth annual report of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions shows the total receipts from all sources to be $1,044,504, the deficit of $54,254 carried from last year having been made good, and leaving a balance of $1,858 in the treasury. The Woman's Society and boards raised $329,889.

—A late Honolulu paper gives an account of a political preacher's troubles with his church at Lahaina. He persisted in preaching annexation to the United States, and the congregation by a large majority voted to eject him. The controversy grew so hot that violence was threatened, and officers of the law interfered to preserve the peace. At last accounts the church doors were nailed up.

—Mayor Des Jardenes has created something of a sensation by declaring that he could take no part in the reception of the officers and men of the Italian war ship, Ætna, which was to have arrived there on the 30th inst. He says, being a good Roman Catholic, he can take no part whatever in the reception of the war ship of the country whose government is under the ban of the Vatican. The mayor is a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire and a most devout Catholic.