News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 31, 1868

News and Miscellany.

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

—INJURIES by the late flood have been very general, extending from Canada, through the States of New York, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. At Rock Island an ice gorge occasioned much danger, injuring the railroad bridge, and taking out the Moline dam. Also at Cleveland and Toledo the loss was serious. The injury done to bridges through the country is very great.

Number out of Employment in the City of New York.— In the month of January the World estimated that over 50,000 operatives—male and female—had been discharged from the workshops in that city. The New York Herald estimates the number out of employment in the month of March as augmented to 100,000.

—While there seems to be some danger of a new engulfment of the still partly buried site of Pompeii, another ancient city has come to the surface. Traces of a large ancient town near Castranova, in Sicily, high up on a plateau of the Cassera Mountains, have been discovered, and excavations are to be set on foot without delay.

Growth of New York.— A cursory examination of the income statistics of that metropolis will probably surprise even those who think themselves prepared to believe anything about New York, and will show how rapidly the city of New York is absorbing the real busy life of the country. For instance, the city of New York returns as heavy an income tax as the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts combined; nearly three times as much as Philadelphia or Boston; and eighteen per cent. more than the whole of the great State of Pennsylvania, and yet it is notorious that income returns in New York are more incomplete than anywhere else in the United States. But this is not the most striking view of the subject. While the incomes for 1867 in the whole United States show a falling off from the previous years, of over three millions, New York city shows an increase in her returns of over thirteen millions. All the other great cities show a large falling off of revenue, but New York continues to grow with a steadiness and rapidity that, considering the financial distress and industrial paralysis that has oppressed the country, is absolutely wonderful.

LOVE OF THE WORLD.

The sacred Scriptures represent the Saviour's disciples as persons who have little concern with this world; whose chief business here should be to glorify God, and press forward to Heaven. Jesus said, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth.” “Set your affections on things above, not on things on earth; for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” How full, how impressive, are those words of the blessed Jesus: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” This world was no object of his affection. He slighted its wealth, scorned its treasures, disregarding its fading pursuits, and all its deceitful maxims. It had no charms for him; its terrors could not alarm, nor its allurements entice him. He acted in it as a stranger come to perform an important commission, and then leave it. Are you one of his disciples? This world is no more to be the object of your affections than it was of his. This holy deadness to the present world is described impressively by the apostle Paul: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world.” If you are a follower of Jesus, you, too, must be crucified to the world, and the world to you. As you would escape eternal death, as you desire eternal life, watch against love to the world. It has been the ruin of millions. Beware of this rock. On it, crowds that seemed once setting out for Heaven, have made shipwreck of faith and eternal hopes. The world is Satan's grand temptation. If that bait fail, he has none more alluring to present. The world was the last temptation by which he tried the Son of God. “All these things,” said he, “will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” When that was rejected, he fled; he had no higher bribe to offer. Love to the world is the most fatal of sins. The Scriptures tell us of some eminently pious men that fell deeply, but as bitterly repented; but not one child of God is described who was a lover of the world. For this is not merely a single sin, a casual fall, but a state of mind, a disposition of heart, connected with all that is opposed to God and goodness. This sin is also peculiarly dangerous because it is peculiarly insidious. It steals into the heart, and governs there, and yet deceives the slave it governs. It kills hopes of immortality, and yet its wretched slave perhaps connects himself with a Christian church; professes the religion of Jesus; brings, it may be, no flagrant disgrace upon his profession; but still lives and dies deceived. Were he to become a swearer or a drunkard, his friends would disown him, as dead to God. His crimes would stare him in the face, and conscience might take the alarm, and bid him flee from the wrath to come. But the love of the world feels no such alarm. He stands as a member of the church, or perhaps sustains some office in it; or ascends the pulpit, and bids others flee from ruin; yet he is himself a child of hell, for he is a lover of the world. O my fellow-pilgrim, there is no religion in the heart while the world is loved. If any man, let his knowledge of divine truth be ever so extensive, let his profession be ever so strict, let his zeal for truth be ever so flaming, his character ever so amiable, and his standing in the church ever so long, yet, “if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

All the forms of religion may be assumed, all open sins be renounced, by him who yet remains a lover of the world. The drunkard may become sober, the lewd grow chaste, the liar true, the pilferer honest, the profane reverence his Maker's name, the Sabbath-breaker frequent God's house, and the prayerless learn to pray, and yet this master sin, this treacherous vice, may lie hidden within. And the man who has undergone the change now described, may be as far from God, and perhaps farther than when he drank in iniquity like water. Then, he had some fears that his state was bad; now, he thinks that all is right; and yet, because he loves the world, all is wrong. Perhaps you inquire, How shall this secret evil be discerned? The mention of a few marks of it may assist self-examination. Love to the world rules within, if, for the sake of profit, ease, or pleasure, you are kept back from accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord, your Saviour, and your all. Jesus said, “He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.” Love to the world rules in your heart, if through fear of loss or injury, you persist in what you know to be sinful. If, for instance, there be anything in your trade or avocation, that you know is inconsistent with religion, and yet, to avoid loss or secure gain, you persist in following this, by so doing you plainly show that you love the world more than God and your own soul; that you are no Christian. “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.” Common reason may further convince us, that love to the world is to be known by anxiety to acquire worldly good, and unwillingness to part with it.—Pike's Guide.