Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 26, 1903

—Cyclonic storms in Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, and Oklahoma, May 23, caused the death of seven persons and injured many others, besides doing immense damage to crops and buildings.

—Press reports state that Europe is waiting on the next Russian move in the Balkans, and that the crisis in Bulgaria is growing more acute. The situation in Macedonia is no better.

—The Presbyterian creed has been revised by the adoption of eleven amendments to its articles, at the General Assembly at Los Angeles, Cal., May 22. All the changes made were by a nearly unanimous vote. The customary resolutions against Sunday desecration were passed by the Assembly.

—The city of St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, was visited by a disastrous conflagration, May 20, which destroyed several industries and two hundred houses, leaving a large portion of the population homeless. The loss amounts to $400,000.

—A report from The Hague says it is stated that the Hotel Vieux Doelen will be purchased as a part of the site for the peace palace which is the gift of Andrew Carnegie. The site is the best at The Hague. The price is $300,000.

—A report from the Philippines states that a large district in the city of Manila was swept by fire, May 20, two thousand houses being destroyed, at a loss of $1,000,000. Eight thousand natives, men, women, and children, are homeless, and are being fed and sheltered by the municipal government.

—Opponents of Socialism report that it is growing with alarming rapidity in Germany, the Socialist vote in 1898 having reached the high total of 2,300,000, while at the present time the leaders of the Conservative, National-Liberal, Anti-semitic, and Agrarian parties have deemed it necessary to combine their forces to stay Socialism's further advance.

—While the inhabitants of New York City and Philadelphia were suffering from heat, which in the former city caused eight deaths and numerous prostrations, May 20, a furious blizzard was raging in Montana, accompanied by a temperature of several degrees below zero. Sheep were abandoned to their fate, and it is estimated that 900,000 perished, causing a monetary loss of several million dollars.

—A Salt Lake City dispatch states that a special grand jury, the second to be called together since statehood was granted Utah in January, 1896, was sworn to-day. The present grand jury is composed of four non-Mormons and three Mormons. It is probable that the polygamy question, revived since the election of Reed Smoot to the United States Senate, will come before the grand jury for investigation. The Utah law provides that an indictment requires the votes of at least five members of a grand jury.

—Recently the Rev. T. J. Moody, a Presbyterian pastor of Newburg, Ind., was elected town clerk, and one of his first cares as a city official was to issue an order for a rigid enforcement of the Sunday law. All places of business were closed, and drug stores were permitted to sell only on the order of a physician. A report states that “the merchants of the town, who have been accustomed to keep open on Sunday, are greatly offended at the action of the minister and clerk. In a sermon Sunday the Rev. Mr. Moody said he knew the Lord was with him in his move, and stated that if closing the town up tight on Sunday killed the town, it would be the best thing for society and the community at large.”

—Clergymen of Elizabeth, N. J., are determined to put a stop to Sunday baseball in that city, and to this end have secured the co-operation of Justice Van Sickel, who recently charged the grand jury to indict the heads of the police department if the latter neglected to enforce the Sunday observance

statutes. Accordingly the police assembled at the ball grounds the following Sunday, where a crowd of 8,000 persons had assembled to witness the game, and arrested the players as soon as the first move in the game had been made. The statute under which the arrests were made relates to the suppression of vice and immorality, and defines Sunday as the Sabbath. We have not learned the outcome of the prosecution.