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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 26, 1867

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the Times? Matt. xvi, 3.

The Rev. Mr. Murphy, a Catholic priest in Portsmouth, N. H., was recently invited to offer the prayer at the opening of the Supreme Court in that city.

Garibaldi, it is said, is to be exiled from Italy to the United States. He will receive an ovation in this country, if he comes, such as would be tendered to no other man in all Europe. Garibaldi claims to be a citizen of the United States, it is reported. We doubt if he was ever fully naturalized; but it is said that he declared his intentions to become a citizen, and took out his first papers in New York, many years ago. If this is true, it can easily be verified by an examination of the records in New York.

—Fear not to pray, because your tongue is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you. Just as the mother understands the first babblings of her infant, so does the blessed Jesus understand those who call upon him in prayer. He can read a sigh, and hear a groan.—J. C. Ryle.

—“One pound of cotton,” says Mr. Gordon, “which formerly could only be spun into a thread of 108 yards long, can now, by the application of steam, produce a thread of 167 miles in length.”

—The trade between San Francisco and China is destined to be of immense importance. A dispatch from San Francisco, of Oct. 14th, says that the last steamer from China took nine hundred passengers, seven hundred tons of freight, and one million in treasure. Another indication is the fact that a submarine telegraph from San Francisco to Japan and China is suggested; and the opening trade of the new line of steamships holds out strong encouragement for undertaking the enterprise. All of which goes toward making New York ultimately the commercial center of the world.

—In the department of the Home Journal entitled “chit-chat,” we were informed that in a fashionable church in Pittsfield, Mass., strangers are seated according to their dress. Moire antique and boniton close to the pulpit, muslin half-way up the aisle, and last year’s bonnets back by the door.

—The oldest city in the world, is Damascus. Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra lies buried in the sands of the desert. Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Damascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham—a center of trade and travel, an island of verdure in the desert.

—A clergyman going to a miserly old lady to beg for a worthy object, found himself refused on the ground of poverty. Finding himself much interested in her story, he expressed great surprise thereat, and said, “I had not thought you in such want;” and then taking out some money he said, “here is something that will do for the present purpose; when I call again, I will give you more.” The old lady was so enraged that she gave him a good round sum to show that she did not mean she was a pauper.

Sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States.—Copenhagen, November 2. It is again reported that the United States have purchased the Danish West India Islands, but the amount to be paid is now stated to be $14,000,000. Christensen, formerly Governor of St. Thomas, it is said, will be sent to Washington by the Danish Government to complete the transfer of the Islands.

The Roman Question—The Pope’s Temporal Power.—London, November 16. The conference proposed by Emperor Napoleon for the settlement of the Roman question seems to be attended with difficulties. The Pope objects to any conference whatever, and the several Powers which have been invited to participate are divided on the question of the necessity for a conference. It is asserted that Spain is the only nation that supports the temporal power of the Pope in any event.

Trichina in St. Louis.—St. Louis, November 16. Two clearly defined cases of trichina died in the city hospital last night. At a post mortem examination, made at a meeting of the medical society this evening, the muscles of the men were shown which contained ciscus gregarinæ. One of the men had been treated for consumption and the other for typhoid fever.

The Real Feeling of the South.—Every Southern State reconstructed on the White basis is to-day a Rebel State—shaped and ruled by men who execrated Lincoln’s reluctant and tardy resistance to the Rebellion as a causeless and criminal aggression, and profoundly rejoiced over Bull Run as their victory. There is no paramount question of good faith or gratitude to the Blacks. Their votes are as necessary to the preponderance of White loyalty as to their own protection and security. Reconstruct the South, on the White basis, and every one of the fifteen States which held slaves in 1860 will be intensely, overwhelmingly Copperhead thenceforth and evermore. Allow to-day the plea that the Blacks are ignorant and degraded, and those whom you thereby clothe with power will take good care that the plea shall be as valid and well-grounded a century hence as it is now. Public Education and Civil Rights for the Freedmen can only be achieved and maintained through the ballot. “We are for Negro suffrage—the way they suffered in New Orleans,” was the inscription on a banner borne in a late Conservative or Democratic procession in Baltimore; and the spirit which dictated that avowal is still rampant in the South. But for what is stigmatized as Military Despotism, it would daily avenge by outrage and infliction what it deems negro treachery to the Southern cause.

The Evangelical Alliance.—Observance of the Sabbath.—Some of the “sectional” meetings of the Conference were of a very interesting character. In one of these the question of the observance of the Lord’s day came under review. It was the wish of the British Organization of the Evangelical Alliance to speak as decidedly in Amsterdam as in Geneva about the Continental mode of spending the Sabbath. M. Alexander Lombard, of Geneva, spoke with great earnestness and ability upon the subject. He said he advocated the cause of the Lord’s day, not merely as a day holy unto the Lord, but from a social point of view. He expressed his hearty desire that the Conference should not separate without something more being done to improve the observance of the day on the Continent. He thought committees should be formed in the various towns and countries of the Continent, and referred to what had been done in Neufchâtel and other places after the Conference of 1861 at Geneva. He wanted to see an international league established for the purpose of directing general attention to the subject, and of stirring up continental governments to release workmen from their seven days’ toil. Eventually a resolution was unanimously adopted calling upon the representatives of different countries to use all their influence, upon their return home, to bring about a better observance of the Lord’s day.