Notes of News | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 13, 1879

Notes of News.

—Civil strife has broken out in Cabul, Afghanistan.

—The American Home Missionary Society is out of debt.

—Yale College has a daily paper, The Yale Daily News.

—There is a Baptist church with a congregation of a hundred at the “city of Samaria,” where was Jacob’s well.

—A disease has appeared at Xanthi, Thessaly, which is thought by the sanitary board of Trieste to be identical with the plague.

—“Hoopla” is classical Californian for the plural of “hoodlum.” There are 600 of him in San Francisco, according to the latest estimates.

—The Anti-Chinese bill has passed the House by a vote of 155 to 72. It prohibits the importation of over 15 Chinese on a vessel owned by a United States citizen.

—No liquors, wines, or lager beer may be sold in any part of the new Connecticut State House. The resolution passed the Assembly with decided enthusiasm.

—The Japanese churches connected with the Presbyterian, Reformed, and Scotch United Presbyterian Missions propose to send a pioneer missionary to Corea.

—A company of 22 young Japanese meet weekly in the Chinese Methodist Mission House in San Francisco, to study the Bible and to discuss religious questions.

—The pope has sold the last ship of his navy. Sensible! What does the head of the church want of a ship of war? St. Peter, from whom he claims descent, was a fisherman, not an admiral.

—Professor Cox, of Indiana, who recently examined the Arizona mining region, says that the mining property of Southern Arizona, once developed, would supply the world with precious metals.

—A dispatch from Copenhagen says that the Danish ministers at Berlin and Vienna will probably be recalled. There have been previous rumors of trouble between Denmark, and Germany and Austria.

—England wants to purchase, out-and-out, certain crown lands in Cyprus, and offers Turkey £15,000 for them; but Turkey discounts the advance in consequence of British occupation, and demands £55,000 for them.

—The pastor of the First Presbyterian church, Easton, Pa., has printed a pocket list of prayer-meeting topics, interspersed in which, in attractive style, is this suggestion, which members of many other churches might accept: “Take a front seat.”

—The English language is spoken by 87,000,000 of people over the world, the Spanish by 63,500,000, the German by 53,000,000, and the French by 43,000,000. The Spanish thus stands second in importance as a commercial language as it regards the numbers reached by it.

—The military cordon around the Russian districts infected by the plague is 1,000 miles long. According to the investigation made by the German Board of Health, the plague has existed in Astrakhan since May, 1877. Even paper money in the district has been ordered burned.

—The Christian Union says: “A good many people write to the city dailies that they are greatly annoyed when out sleigh-riding Sunday afternoons by boys who pelt them without especial care in selecting soft snow. Strange that these people do not understand that this is the boys’ way of intimating that there may be two opinions about the propriety of sleighing on Sunday.”

—The city of Bagdad, in Asiatic Turkey, says Grattan Geary, in his journey from Bombay to the Bosphorus recently published by Harper & Bros., is remarkable for a mysterious malady which affects everybody, whether citizen or stranger. It is a dry, eating sore, which comes generally on the face, lasts for a year, and then goes away forever, leaving an indelible mark about the size and shape of a date. The spot looks as though the surface had been seared by caustic or a hot iron. European and American physicians have tried in vain either to ascertain the cause of the malady or to find a cure.

—A recital recently held in the Chapel of St. Paul, an elegant American church opened in Rome on Christmas day, was attended by many of the Roman and foreign aristocracy, including the crown prince of Sweden, the American Minister, the Ambassadors of England, Germany, Holland, Bavaria, Switzerland, and Japan, and several ladies and gentlemen of the royal household.

—The new capitol building at Albany, N. Y., it is said, will mark a new era in building on the Western Continent. It is a vast pile, expensive and complicated in its interior arrangement. A fire occurred in one part of the building the other night, and a company of firemen got lost in the building. They could neither find the fire nor their way out. Many millions have already been expended upon it, and it will require about $4,000,000 more to finish it.

—The Legal Committee of the Federal Council of Germany have eliminated the most obnoxious provisions of Bismarck’s disciplinary bill, and have toned down other provisions. The bill, as amended, limits the power of the Reichstag over its members to their conduct as members, that is, while exercising the privileges or discharging the functions of members; and a warning is in every case to precede an official reprimand. But though the bill is now harmless enough, the feeling among the members continues opposed to it. They think that a measure curtailing their privileges should originate with themselves, and not with the government.

—Mr. Pentecost, who has recently entered upon evangelistic work in Chicago, stepped into an engagement on “the woman question” about the middle of the week. He was given the conduct of the daily noon prayer-meeting in Farwell Hall. In the course of the meeting an excellent Christian woman, well gifted in prayer, rose and took part. As she closed, Mr. Pentecost requested that “women should hold their own separate prayer-meetings, and not pray in Farwell Hall.” His course has aroused too much opposition to justify any expectation of a Pentecostal blessing from his preaching, though he put his request on the ground that women could not make themselves heard.

—The Rev. Monsignor de Haerne, of the English College of Bruges, has prepared a statistical work on the progress of Catholicism among the peoples of Anglo-Saxon origin. He states that in the year 1855 the number of Roman Catholic sees existing in the British colonies, including British America, Australia, India, and the West Indies, was forty-four. In 1876 the numbers had doubled, being then eighty-eight. Taking the ten dioceses of Canada, it is found that in 1869 the number of churches in these dioceses was 779, while in 1876 the increase had been 913, the Roman Catholic clergy increasing from 768 to 1,171, and the number of religious houses from 73 to 196.

—The celebrated cathedral of Cologne is said to be threatened with ruin. The stone of which it is built is a prey to atmospheric ravages, turns soft, and crumbles. In the oldest part of the noble southern tower, the cornices, moldings, and fillets are so much injured that the original profile is no longer to be seen. Some large square stones, which are being withdrawn, fell into crumbs at the lightest stroke of the hammer, and experts fear that decomposition is going on in the gigantic arched buttresses. The cathedral was commenced about the beginning of the ninth century, and completed A. D. 873. This structure was ruined by the Normans, was rebuilt, but in 1248 was almost wholly destroyed by fire. The new choir was consecrated in 1322. The cathedral, which is in the form of a cross, has a length of 480 and a breadth of 282 feet; the height of the central aisle is 154 feet; that of each of the towers, when completed, will be upwards of 200 feet. The heaviest of the six bells weighs eleven tons.