THE TIMES | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 27, 1869

THE TIMES.

As our age is acknowledged to be a progressive one, the following culled items will show wherein we are progressive—not in righteousness, but backward, to eternal perdition.

RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS, etc. Boston Journal, of Feb. 11, 1869, speaking of Manchester, N. H., “Correspondent” says: “I am safe in saying that less than half of this people, who are of a suitable age to attend church, ever enter a religious meeting of any kind. . . . Churches are thinly attended, compared with thirty years ago. . . . One reason why some of the churches in the larger towns have lost their hold on the affections of a large portion of the people, is because they have become the temples of fashion and display, instead of the sanctuary. . . . Another cause of the diminution is the dullness and monotonous duration of the sermons. . . . For a series of years ’tis the same trite phraseology, both in preaching and prayer; the same threadbare arguments, and stale illustrations.”

Father Ignatius, lecturing in London, said, “There were (900,000,000) nine hundred millions who do not believe in Christ at all;” and that it was “a pity the few believers in Christ should quarrel among themselves.”—New York Rural, of Jan. 2, 1869.

Dr. Holland, in Springfield Republican, says, on “Religion at home and abroad, in Switzerland,”: “We see everywhere the Sabbath desecrated. . . . They forget that there is a world to be converted. . . . Religion is a thing apparently unknown here.”

Herald, of July 11, 1868, states that at Lyons (France), the “clergy have Sunday services earlier, so that the people could attend the races.”

Post, of Dec. 4, 1868, says: “Rev. Mr. Denton, the Bible Agent, to give Bibles to every family in the county, canvassed Warren, Mass. Out of four hundred and sixty-seven families, three hundred and sixty-eight claim to attend church, eighty of which had no Bibles; eighteen refused to accept one, even as a gift.”

Publisher’s Circular, of Dec. 15, 1868, says: “Charles Read, of London, has to have $50,000 by the publishers of the New York Galaxy for writing a novel for that paper.”

Putnam, for January, 1869, says: “Of the writing of many novels in England, there is not only no end, but a fresh beginning.”

INCREASE OF CRIMES. Round Table, of Dec. 19, 1868, on “Chapter of Horrors,” says: “Dismal as has been the long catalogue, crimes and casualties of the last ten years have shocked the most refined centres of the world.”

Day’s Doings, of Dec. 12, 1868. The Leader on “The Blood Carnival,—the Reign of Terror,—the Plague Murder,” etc., says: “Every paper throughout the country was compelled to devote its columns to the detail of deeds of self-destruction. Men, women and children seemed to be taken suddenly weary of life and

earth, and rushed to death and the unknown. Every possible variety of self-extinction was successfully practiced. Some resorted to the rope, others to the knife, others again to the water, and not a few to the cup of poison. Even the young lad, or budding maiden, who from their youth knew nothing of the world, seemed to have become tired of it, before they had learned any thing about it, and rid themselves of existence as they would of a burden. And now, at the present date, even while we write these lines, a carnival of blood is holding revel in our midst. The plague of murder is upon us. North, South, East, and West, we read of women and men killed by women and men. We cannot suffer our eyes to rest upon a stray paragraph, without the well-grounded fear that it may contain the account of some recent tragedy. The very demon of crime seems to be stalking in earth night and day, seeking whom it may devour. The plague of murder appears to be confined to no particular locality.

‘No pent-up Utica confines its powers, But the whole boundless universe is’— blood and death. In the country, amid rural sights and sounds, amid all the breezy freedom of the fields, the fiend is active. . . . But in the corrupt and corrupting city, the plague of murder is especially virulent. It affects with its foul influence both high and low, rich and poor. The knife, the gun, and even the poker, are used to fulfill the mad dictates of hate, avarice, and drink.”

Police News of New York says:—“It is impossible to account for the gradual increase of crime in the various cities of the Union. . . . Crime is on the increase in every city and town in the United States. Many of the crimes comprehend some of the most frightful in the calendar, and a number of them are really nameless. Who will explain the cause of this steady expansion?”

Portland Transcript, of January 9, 1869, thinks that “Lewiston (Maine) rivals Sodom and Gomorrah in wickedness, if one is to believe the Lewiston Journal; which makes the startling revelation that three hundred cases of abortion occur there annually.”

The Last Sensation, of January 18, says: “In France there were 139,000 convictions; in England there were 339,000 convictions for crimes committed. Such news from the London Times is astounding, when we consider that England is the greatest missionary place or country on the globe. But all these things prove conclusively the Scriptures true, that wickedness shall increase, seducers waxing worse and worse, and people having only a form of godliness.”

The New York Herald, June 13, 1868, says:—“There are five millions and a quarter dollars spent for prostitution in New York; and 172,000 people affected with disease.” The same paper states that “tobacco is used by eight hundred millions of people.”

The Congregationalist & Recorder, of Oct. 29, 1868, quoting from the Christian Mirror, an article on “Pre-infanticide,” says:—“On investigation and proof from high medical authority, the proof is all on one side. Let the imagination draw the darkest picture that reason could allow, and it would fail to set forth the shocking details of this horrid home of crime. . . . Full one-third of the population of our land fall by the hands of violence. . . . ’Tis more destructive than war, slavery, and intemperance put together. A blood stain upon Christianity, forcing a hundred times more hands to heaven red with blood, for the curse of God, than all other murders in our land put together. . . . The crime itself has become a fashion.”

The Herald says that “it took two days to burn the obscene books of a London publisher.” What would the aggregate of missionary London be? The same paper calls the present state of things the “Rain of the knife,” and adds that “there are four hundred and nine arrests in New York City every twenty-four hours.”

The Alta Californian urges that San Franciscans, who have babies they want to get rid of, may “have the decency to throw them into the bay, and not leave so many about the streets, as it has become disagreeable.”

After reading these things who can say that the world is progressing in Christianity? I would that man would pay more attention to the word of God, than to the fables of these last days.

Harper’s Magazine for last May, page 809, on amusements, says: “That the ballet should enchant the public for more than a year, is declared to be another proof of our demoralized condition; another of those horrible portents in which we seem to behold the advent of the disastrous end of things.”

Can we expect other than a sad state of things to exist, when boys have become demons in crime? Says The Boston Herald:—“A party of boys broke into the family tomb of the Putnam family, at Danvers, Mass., stole the silver plate from the coffins, sold the bones of the bodies to peddlers; and when arrested were playing foot-ball with the skulls.” This was last May.

A FEW WAR ITEMS. Rouher, the French minister, said: “All nations must ever be prepared for war; for no confidence could be placed in the fraternity of nations.”

The Tribune says: “The great war will at last be unavoidable.” Yes, the last great battle of God Almighty will come, and will not tarry long.

“Very large purchases of hay have been made in New York for the French government, also heavy purchases of horses for the same party, and the enormous accumulation of bullion in the Bank of France, equal to $250,000,000 (two hundred and fifty millions of dollars), is looked upon by not a few of the longest heads in financial and business circles as indicating a coming war.”

The Paris Presse states that the French Minister of War is establishing in the Hotel Des Invalides two magazines to receive all the necessary material for an army of two hundred thousand men, entering on a campaign. The first magazine already contains the field ovens, machines for making biscuits, boxes of bandages, surgical instruments, ambulances, etc.

Says the New York Post of Sept. 15, 1868: “The Rome correspondent to Pall Mall Gazette says: Nothing is now talked of but the new Saint Maria Taigi, who died in 1837. A great sensation has been created by her prophecies, which were confided to her by her confessor, Father Natali, now ninety years old; who has faithfully related them as the events successively happened. The other day the confessor was asked whether Maria Taigi prophesied any further danger from the Garibaldians? Yes, he answered; and in these days we shall see the Tiber as full of corpses as it is now of fish. At this moment fish are so abundant in the Tiber, owing to the floods from the Umbria, that the Romans pick them out of the water with their hands.”

May we not neglect the signs of the times, as they are beacons of the coming future.—JOHN TAYLOR, in World’s Crisis.