News and Miscellany by F. A. Buzzell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 18, 1873

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 41, No. 14.

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News and Miscellany.

By F. A. Buzzell

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

Significant Items.

COMPILED BY F. A. BUZZELL.

Forty per cent of Chinese converts in California relapse.—Boston Globe.

An earthquake is reported to have taken place recently in India, by which the town of Soonghnr was destroyed, with 1500 of its inhabitants.—Harper’s Weekly.

A terrible earthquake has occurred in the island of Lemos, causing great destruction of property and loss of life.

The cholera has again broken out violently at several places in Russia and Hungary.

Luther’s translation of the Bible is said to have had a circulation thus far of 361,000,000 copies.—Morning Star (Dover, N. H.).

Pere Hyacinthe contends that a union is possible between Catholics and Protestants, if each section will but repudiate the extreme parties who compromise them.

“You can’t do it, sir! you are a fool, sir!” said Humphrey Davy in 1813, when a man told him that cities would soon be lighted by gas.—Boston Globe.

A Texas desperado named Joe Hardin, not 21 years old, the son of a Methodist minister, is reported to have killed twenty-eight men since he was fifteen.—Boston Journal.

The Chinese are busily engaged in building a steam navy, and already have about twenty steam-ships adapted to war purposes, though small.

The murders in New York, for the last three years, according to a careful report in the New York Herald, have been for the year 1870, 46; for the year 1871, 49; and for the year 1872, 56; 151 in all, or almost one a week for the whole period!—(Boston) Pilot.

The United States have in use about 5000 telegraph stations, 75,000 miles of line, and over 7000 employees, who transmit over 11,500,000 messages annually.—By the Way.

The N. Y. World states that over 4000 diseased sheep have been sold in that city within a week, in January.

I place little value on what is called material progress, and I regard the boasted progress of modern civilization, in all other respects, as a deterioration. Modern civilization is substantially that of the Gentile world before its conversion to Christianity.—Brownson’s Review.

ROUND THE WORLD.

A tourist traveling continuously without any stoppages can now go around the world in eighty days, making the entire journey by railway and steam-ship, and going by way of Liverpool, the Suez canal, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, and the Pacific Railway.—By the Way.

OFFICIAL CORRUPTION.

The prevalence of official corruption in high places and low, from the halls of Congress to the village Post-Office, corruption beyond all former precedent, seems too palpable to be questioned. We may disregard rumors of fearful defalcations; enough has been proved and confessed recently, and in many different localities, to startle the most indifferent and put the thoughtful upon the anxious inquiry, Where will this end?—American Messenger.

Does the Republic realize its position before the world, with its Vice-President and about a dozen dozen of its principal Senators clearly convicted of taking bribes, and then basely committing perjury? Last week the N. Y. Herald estimated that fifty out of the seventy-four U. S. Senators obtained their seats by purchase. When we look at the election of Caldwell of Kansas, who bought up at wholesale men and corporations, we are inclined to believe this shocking estimate as true.—(Boston) Pilot.

Possibly there may, in recent evidence upon the above subject, be matter which should somewhat modify part of the above—we would hope so.

WHICH HAS THE BEST CHANCE?

The Watchman and Reflector argues that the enlarged facilities of the present age, which are generally hailed by Christians as sure stepping stones to the conversion of the world, are equally favorable to the spread of heathenism. After referring to the erection of Chinese temples in San Francisco, the secular education of Hindoos in London, and other instances of international deference to heathen religions, it remarks:—

“We have written enough to show that the great movements of the age are not necessarily or exclusively in the interests of Christianity. The mighty inventions and discoveries of science, the wide diffusion of knowledge over the earth, the breaking down of national prejudices and religious bigotries, the growing community of interest and feeling between races and peoples—in these things are found facilities and opportunities for the evil as well as for the good to extend its power. This fact should be more thoughtfully considered than it has been. And it should lead Christian men to renewed effort, consecration and prayer in this great warfare with sin.”

THE OLD YEAR.

The year 1872, when it comes to be surveyed from a distance in time, will doubtless seem a commonplace year enough; but to us who have marked its passage as recorded with photographic accuracy and minuteness in the daily press, it seems to have been one of the most extraordinary and surprising years we ever experienced. This is because the incidents have been turning up in the strangest sort of way, even when they were not of a startling character in themselves. All sorts of accidents have occurred, from colliery to steamboat and kitchen range explosions, from earthquakes to avalanches; strange railway casualties and shipwrecks have occurred; fires have broken out in every direction, beginning with the largest in the granite heart of our own city; every kind of disease known to humanity and animality has raged with peculiar virulence, while the number of sudden deaths, particularly among prominent persons, appears to have been unprecedented; the very climate itself seems to have become unsettled, for the coldest winter on record brought the rainiest summer, and inundations have been the rule from the Mississippi to the Po. In old times, such a commotion of the elements, attended with such disastrous results to mankind, would have been regarded as evidence of the wrath of the higher powers, to be propitiated by every means which honest superstition or priestcraft could suggest.—Boston Journal.