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News and Miscellany

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1873

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 42, No. 5.

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News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”
Died, in Brooklyn, N. Y., June 21, 1873, Lewis Tappan, aged eighty-five years; one of the first and most prominent workers in the anti-slavery movement.
An Indiana Sunday-school man writes to a firm in New York: “Send me on some Sunday-school papers and books. Let the books be about pirates and Indians as far as possible.”
Visit of the Shah.—The cable lately announced, in a single line, the opening of a new historic era. The message ran: “The Shah of Persia to-day arrived in London on a visit to the Queen,” which, being translated, meant, “The long-closed East is open to the civilization of the West.” It is a matter of twenty-four hundred years since the great Darius Hystaspes thundered through Greece, and chained two peoples to his chariot wheels, and since his son’s discomfiture, no Persian monarch has trod European soil till now! The Shah is very observing. In machinery and all the arts of peace he is deeply interested. He has already instituted many reforms in Persia. He has granted to a chartered foreign company permission to build railways, construct canals, reservoirs, and water works; to utilize the forests, work the mines, and farm the revenues.—Christian Union.
The Mexican Congress has passed a new law for the separation of church and state. The law provides that no religion shall be either supported or forbidden by the Government; that marriage shall be regarded as a civil contract, to be legally valid only after registration in the presence of a magistrate; that no religious body shall have any corporate rights; that no Mexican citizen shall be bound by any vow he may have made as member of a religious order; and that witnesses shall not be required to take an oath in a court of justice. Against this uncompromising secularism the Ultramontanes are, of course, arrayed; and it is said that in their agitation for the repeal of the law they are secretly assisted by the president, himself a zealous Catholic, and by several Jesuits, who have lately arrived with instructions from Rome.
The managers of the Chicago and North-western, the Chicago and Iowa, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific, the Burlington and Quincy, the Chicago and Alton, and the Illinois Central Railroads, have signed an agreement to issue no more passes except to their own employees and their families traveling on their own roads.
A fearful tornado at Galesburg, Neosho County, Kansas, recently, blew down a stone house, burying Mrs. Giddings and her three children in the ruins. The children were killed, and Mrs. Giddings was seriously injured. Another house was blown down, and Mr. Raders and wife fatally wounded.
A system of care of the poor which is meeting with much success in Germany is that of providing a visitor for every four poor families, and so securing permanent and careful personal supervision.
The Sultan of Turkey has fallen into a state of melancholy, or even madness, which at times quite incapacitates him for business. There are indications also of a revolutionary spirit in the capital, and a change in the succession is not unlikely.
Ten genuine African boys arrived at Lincoln University (colored) in Pennsylvania a week or two ago, just in time to make a sensation at its Commencement, when they were brought upon the platform and introduced. Six of these youths are from the Basso tribe, one a Congo, one a Vey, and two from Liberia, all of whom the Presbytery of Western Africa has sent to this institution in the United States to receive an education, with the expectation that in a few years they will return to their own people to preach the Gospel as trained ministers.
In the sudden death of the Archbishop of Utrecht, at Cologne, the Old Catholics in Europe have met with a serious loss, especially at this critical moment when he was looked up to as their ecclesiastical head in their conflict with the dogmas of the Papal supremacy and infallibility.
The Great Eastern arrived at Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, June 27, having successfully laid the fourth Atlantic Cable. Of those previously laid, two are in working order. That of 1865 broke a few months ago, and the Great Eastern will now proceed to grapple for it.
Khiva is captured at last—this time, officially. The town surrendered unconditionally. Whether Russia will at once take permanent possession of the province, or retire after taking guarantees for future good behavior, remains to be seen.
The will of Humphrey Jewell, a wealthy citizen of Ulster County, who died in March last, has been set aside by the Surrogate, on the ground that at the time it was made, the testator’s mind was so disordered and weakened by disease, as to have no testamentary capacity. The New York State Bible Society, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church, the Home of the Friendless in this city, the Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church, and the Orphan Society of this city, lose, by this decision, bequests amounting in all to $40,000.—Christian Union.
The drought this season has been most severe in New England, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania and New York, and in most of Delaware and Maryland. The grass is nearly a failure in some parts.