News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 2, 1872

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

When Chicago was burned, and the people all over the country were pouring out their offerings for the relief of the suffering, without regard to nationality or creed, the Romanists joined in the appeal, and collected largely. Of course the public expected their charities to go with the gifts of others for the common relief. But not so. An order goes out from the Hierarchy to send the gifts of Catholics to the bishops of Chicago for distribution, and for the rebuilding the Catholic houses and institutions. The Catholic poor by multitudes will share the general relief, and the Catholic contributions will go for church purposes. This is a plain commentary on the policy of that church. It indicates sharpness, and betrays the spirit of the priesthood in its truest colors.

We see it stated, says the Watchman and Reflector, that the other day, on the passage of a Roman Catholic bishop by one of our national forts, the flags were lowered and raised, and guns fired, as a complimentary salute. If this is true, the commanding officer should be cashiered. By what right, by what authority did he thus commit his government to a particular form of religion? By what right does he, as a United States officer, recognize any sect? This outrage upon decency, upon national honor, upon the vital principles of our civil institutions, would have been just as blameworthy if the ecclesiastic had been Episcopal, Baptist, Congregational, or Mormon. Such toadyism is disgraceful as well as illegal, and should be met with both public and official condemnation. A quasi or real official recognition of Roman Catholics is becoming quite too common with city and State authorities; of course in these cases conscience has nothing to do with it; it is a mere bidding for votes, but the practice is none the less vicious, and one to be promptly and forever put an end to. The practice is still more reprehensible when the national government is implicated.

Japan is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting countries on the globe. She is opening her shell and walking in and out before the people of the earth with a new sense of self respect in place of the old one of self-importance. Her Emperor has determined to send his daughters to the United States to learn what women are doing here—particularly, perhaps, in Wyoming Territory. The State is declaring its independence of the church, and bids the Buddhist priests prepare to serve, like JINKS, of the Horse Marines, as captains in the army.

A curious thing in regard to the Japanese has just been curiously confirmed. The existence of the peculiar civilization of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru has given rise to the hypothesis that America was peopled by the Asiatics who crossed the ferry at Bhering’s Straits. The chief obstacle to this notion was that the art of navigation was too crude ever to have furnished means of transportation. Last week some Japanese seamen arrived at San Francisco, whose junk was disabled on their own coast, but who were carried by the Ocean current twenty-five hundred miles, to the island of Adaho, off the Alaskan shore. They were nine months in making the voyage. Three out of twenty-six perished from hunger. The arrival of the remainder on these shores shows the possibility of like events having happened before.