THE WORK IN ENGLAND by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 17, 1881

THE WORK IN ENGLAND.

By John Norton Loughborough

THE month which has elapsed since my last report has been a busy one with us in this mission. We have received some encouragement in that we learn that others are interested to read the periodicals we are posting to them. Some are accepting the truths taught in these papers. We are expecting every day the first parcel of the larger amount of papers, and we hope, as the area of our labors shall by this means become broader, to see still greater interest.

Bro. Ings still meets with much encouragement in his work on the ships, and occasionally finds those already interested who have received the SIGNS OF THE TIMES from American vessels. We suppose these must have been placed on them in some of the American ports. The people on ships frequently exchange papers when meeting other ships. By the various means employed, our papers are being widely circulated, and the reading of them raises an inquiry for "more of those papers."

The quarterly meeting of the National Tract and Missionary Society of Great Britain was held on the evening of Jan. 16. The report of the labors of the society for the quarter ending Jan. 1, 1881, was as follows:—

No. of members, 26; No. that reported, 19; families visited, 2,058; letters posted, 761; letters received, 133; subscribers received, 16; ships visited, 106; tracts loaned, 57,967 pp.; tracts given away, 11,057 pp.; tracts sold, 5,646 pp.; total tracts circulated, 74,670 pp.; No. of periodicals sent by post, 4,740; sold, 264; given otherwise, 356; total, 5,360. Cash received on sales, $42.94.

The last ten days have been the most snowy and blustering known in this part of the world for many years. The Southampton Weekly Independent, of Jan. 22, says of it: "From all parts of the country there are reports of the damage done by the gales of Monday night and Tuesday; of the obstruction to traffic by road and rail caused by the heavy snow-storm and snow-drifts; and the continued severity of the frosts. All agree in classing it as the most violent storm which has been experienced for many years, and attended with great destruction of property and loss of life. Supplementing snowed up trains in all directions and almost the entire stoppage of locomotion on land, consequent on the heavy snowdrifts, we have news of the most serious losses at sea; and on Tuesday a high tide in the Thames flooded, in addition to many other places, the low-lying neighborhoods between Blackfriars and Westminster bridges, leading to most heart-rending scenes, many of the houses and buildings between Ground street and Waterloo being flooded with five and one-half feet of water.

"Trains in Devonshire were snowed in, and all postal communication by road was stopped in Somersetshire, and whilst in the Bristol Channel a heavy gale was experienced, on the Clyde there was a terrible storm, and many vessels are reported lost. . . . In the south of the Severn, as in the Thames, the masses of ice brought down by the stream helped the gale in causing immense havoc among shipping and house property. Twenty vessels are reported ashore, and likely to become total wrecks, near Cardiff. From the southern and eastern coast similar stories of disaster on land and sea are told—of fishing boats lost, houses flooded and dismantled, harbor works damaged, and traffic suspended. Even the seaward face of a church clock on the Norfolk coast was wrenched away, and carried off to the North Sea. On a short line of railway—the Lancashire and Yorkshire—no fewer than fourteen trains were snowed up. Not the least serious of the effect of the storm has been the complete derangement of the telegraphic system."

Among the believers in the "perihelion" theory of the planets, there has been a time of exultation of late over the supposed verification of their predictions, in the sudden gales and unsteadiness of climate.

The reader of Scripture prophecy sees in these convulsions of nature a token of the fulfillment of the words of the Lord by the psalmist (Ps. 102: 25-27; Heb. 1: 10-12): "Yea, all of them shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed." As expressed by Cowper, in his "Task," book 2:—

"The old And crazy earth has had her shaking fits More frequent, and forgone her usual rest; And nature seems with dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all."

While the elements are thus deranged and shaken, let us look forward to that kingdom "which cannot be moved," earnestly striving for a part in that land where sorrow ne'er shall enter and tempests never blow. J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.