He Religions "World."

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 196, 19 August 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

He Religions "World."

The Bishop of Waiapu is to represent the Bishops and Anglican Church of New Zealand at the jubilee of the Australian Board of Missions, to be held in Sydney next year. The Archbishop of Capetown also hopes to be present; and the Bishops of Melanesia and New Guinea will represent their respective dioceses. "You will Jive to be a hundred," said Dr. Paponi to Leo XIII. on June 19. '"So be it," answered the Pope, and he gave the doctor his benediction. A protest against the study of "ivanhoe" and "The Merchant of Venice" in the public schools has been made by the Christian Mission to Jews in' New York, on the ground that students are prejudiced against the Jewish race by these books. The Key. W. Goodman, who was elected in June as the President of the Primitive Methodist Conference of Britain, is a native of Peterborough, Northamptonshire, and commenced life as a newsboy at a bookstall of ■ Messrs W. H. Smith and Son. ; At a recent meeting of the Presbytery of Melbourne North, an overture has been can led, but by a thin house, > and after a long and warm discussion, j '"suggesting the revision of the rules ol! procedure in cases of discipline and heresy, in view of the indignity ; inflicted upon the church by the un- ! due publicity and advertisement that j accrued to heretics under the present I system." Referring1 to the desired visit to J Australia of some Anglican ecclesiastic ol: high rank from England, in connection "with the celebration of the jubilee of the Australian Board of | Missions, it is said by the "Church | News" that there is little chance of Dr. Temple leaving England for po long a time; but it is hoped that the Bishop of Bath and Weils and | Canon Gore may see their way to pay i a visit at that time. The Eev. Y. A. Barradale, 8.A., was j recently ordained in Mansfield Chapel, j Oxford, as a missionary of the London j Missionary Society to Samoa, for which he was to leave England in July. His first work is to be undertaken in connection with the Malua Training Institution. The Eev. R. H. Connolly. 0.5. E., who is the first Catholic religieuse to win honours at Cambridge University since the Reformation, is a son of the late Mr Nathaniel Connolly, police magistrate at Carcoar, and a nephew of the lions. C. G. and L. P. lleydon, Ms.L.C, of New South Wales. A writer in the "Methodist Times" says: Complaints are continually reaching us i'rem all parts of the country with respect to the unnecessary length of sermons. When a minister, be he who he may, deliberately and habitually preaches sermons of excessive length he is guilty of the same moral offence as the drunkard, without the unhappy drunkard's excuse of a tendency to drunkenness inherited" from parents or grandparents. Preaching sermons of excessive length is a form of wicked self-indulgence. The next "Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions" is to be held in New York-, from April io May 1, 1900. The last conference took place in London in iSSJS. Representatives oi' leading missionary societies in Great Britain and "Ireland have already been requested by the general committee in America to co-operate with them in the arrangements they are making, and it is hoped that each organisation will send two or more delegates. Statistics prove that the Catholic faith is stationary, if not declining, in Great Britain. In a note on the subject, the "Church Times" quotes figtires from the Registrar-General's marriage returns which show that | during- the forty-four years from 1853 I to 1897 the number of marriages solemnised according to Catholic rites has fallen from fifty-one to forty-one per 1,000. The figures for different dates are: In 1853, fifty-one per 1000; in 1857,, forty-six per 1000; in 1867, forty-four per 1000; in 1897, forty-one per "1000. Lecturing at the British. Museum recently to the members of the Hampstead Antiquarian Society, the Eev. Dr. Kinns said that there were 100,000 Assyrian inscriptions in the museum. | 20,000 of which had been deciphered,and the work of deciphering the others was constantly going on. So far they had got confirmatory evidence of the Bible story of the Deluge, I of the history of Sennacharib, and of j the narrative of Daniel. The Egyptian inscriptions had confirmed the story of Joseph and of the Exodus. In moving a vote of thanks to the lecturer, the Archbishop of Jamaica said that every fresh discovery tended ' to establish the substantial truth of the Bible narratives, and it was most satisfactory to find the Bible so truth- j ful on things about which it did not ; profess to be an authority. The Eev. Dr. Mackennal, of Bowdon, who is one of the leaders of Nonconformity in Britain, has great hopes of the Free Church movement. In- i . deed, he has been telling a "Sunday I Magazine" interviewer that he thinks ! there is no movement of the time equal to it: "It is," he says, "quite possible that the first years of the new century will be marked by an advance in religion comparable to the Methodist movement of the eighteenth century. But it will be a movement not so much of individual evangelists as a great united movement of the Churches. The result will be that the marked individualism of the Evangelical revival will be displaced by a sense of the fellowship and the social obligations of religion." The common sneer about the 230 sects of Protestant Dissenters is absurd, Dr. Mackennal says, in the face of the testimony to their "oneness" afforded by the National Council. The Executive Committee of the Wesleyan Methodist Twentieth Century Fund are about to issue a complete list of circuit promises and payments, to this movement. Taking British Methodism as a whole, no less than 802 circuits out oi: a total of 814 have now pledged themselves to raise a sum of 662,488 guineas, which is an average of £1 11/5 per member, the highest average being in the Midlands and the North. Of "this amount, the sum of £71,144 has up to date been paid. The late James A. Spttrgeon, D.D., LL.D.. is snid to have been "the richest Noncomfar.mist minister in England I his property since his death having been appraised at nearly £38,000, acquired largely by good investments ami careful managing. He was really n business man rather than a minis-