Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1903 — Religious News and Notes [ARTICLE]

Religious News and Notes

The Archbishop of Toronto, Canada, say* he doe* not desire annexation to th* United States. John D. Rockefeller has agreed to give SIO,OOO to help the Salvation army at Cleveland, Ohio, if SBO,OOO more is raised by May 1 text. The next house of bishops of the Episcopal church will receive an appeal fmru 80,000 Polish Catholics, led by the!’ bishop in America, for admission. A man was scnvtnced recently in England to a month's imprisonment for entering St. Alban’s abbey while drunk-and shouting th* Lord’s prayer from th* altar. Tlie,- Churchman states the religious returns of the census of Australis for 1901 show that tlie Episcopal church ha* 47 per cent of the population in New South Wales, and nearly 5 per cent in Victoria and Tasmania. In the latter places, however, there has been a decline in the last decade. The Methodists have made the greatest proportionate advance, and agnostics and freethinkers, “never numerous,” says tlie Churchman, are approaching the vanishing point. The editor of the Missionary Review of the World attributes the present backward tendencies in foreign missions to the belief that the "period of probation” may lie extended beyond this life, nnd to the "eclectic" view* of religion that prevail. He say* further that there has been a serious decline In the practical supremacy of Chrlstinnlty, due mainly to the loss of sanction* nnd rewards and th* change from the old-fashioned Idea of hell ns n literal lake of fire to a loose and vague conception which rob* It of nil Its terrors. "Practical universalism,” he adds. “I* the plain drift of our day.”