p. 64 | News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 6, 1879

News and Miscellany.

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

THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST.—A native Christian near Allahabad, India, made over his farm to his son, bought a camel, loaded it with Christian books, and started at his own charges for the wild deserts of Rajpootna, to spread the gospel among people who had never seen a Christian.

An army officer, just returned to the Texas frontier from a trip in the interior of Mexico, writes that the Mexican people are almost unanimous in favor of annexation to the United States, they believing that annexation is the only certain cure for their perpetual distresses by revolution, brigandage, etc.

TROUBLES IN AUSTRIA.—There is a prospect of serious troubles in Austria, arising from the composite character of its population, the empire being a confederation of Hungarians, Bohemians, Germans, Poles, Croats, and Sclaves, each retaining its language and national traditions, and resisting all efforts for centralization. Since the Hungarians were allowed to retain their own organizations, other nationalities demand the same privilege, and there is confusion in the national councils. What seems unfortunate for the empire, Count Beust, the enlightened Protestant statesman, who, during its great trials has been its prime minister, has resigned his position.

IMPROVEMENTS IN JAPAN.—The Japanese authorities continue to show their appreciation of the institutions of this country. They have recently engaged, at a high salary, Gen. Geo. B. Williams, who has been connected with the Internal Revenue Department at Washington since its organization, to introduce a similar system in Japan. They have also sent a member of their Board of Education here to procure information about our common school system, and to purchase school books in English and Russian. A Pennsylvania firm has shipped 41 cases of school slates to Japan.

A new religious sect has sprung up in the congenial soil of Russia, the birthplace already of innumerable mushroom creeds as short-lived as their tenets are extravagant. If an additional proof is required to impress upon the new faith the stamp of insanity, it is to be found in the poetical turn of the reformer now startling the neighborhood of Tcheranoslaff, and attracting, as we hear, thousands of converts. He scorns to speak in prose, but expresses himself invariably in rhyme, and an approach to meter. The founder of the sect preaches polygamy, abrogation of all denominational creeds, and utter religious license, and gives himself out for the Saviour.

HARDLY any more fearful calamity is recorded in history, than the present famine in Persia. It threatens to exterminate a whole nation. A traveler in Teheran about two months ago gives the following account:

“In the crowds which swarm in the barrack-square to receive a dole of small silver from the Shah, hundreds, men and women, are literally stark naked, worn to the bone, and covered with sores. The people follow the visitor, howling for bread; two men lie upon the ground quite dead, a third is laid upon one side of the bazaar, covered with a piece of dirty cotton. A naked women lies in the agony of death, surrounded by a crowd of beings almost as badly off as herself. The next form is that of a woman, who scrapes from the ground a handful of melon-seed and filth, which she divides between her two children. The people kill each other in the rush for the English rice that is distributed to them.”

The whole world has an interest in this famine because of the extreme probability that, as is almost invariably the case, pestilence will arise as its fruit, and sweep once more around the world.

The Woman Suffragists have, at length, succeeded in boring an opinion out of the Senate on their foolish assumption that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the National Constitution confer the suffrage upon women, contrary to the design of Congress, of the State legislatures, and of the people, in proposing and ratifying these amendments. The Senate Judiciary Committee have squelched that foolishness by reporting unanimously that the amendments not only do not confer suffrage upon women, but that the Fifteenth Amendment actually recognizes the right of the several State governments to deny women the right of suffrage. This is not the entertainment the Woman Suffragists invited themselves to; but there is little doubt that it is a sound exposition of the Constitution, the more particularly because it not only tallies with the intent of Congress, the State legislatures, and the people in framing and adopting the amendments, but it also agrees with the common-sense meaning of the language of the amendments; and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are the ablest lawyers in the Senate or in the Republic, perhaps, having for chairman Senator Trumbull, who, though he has what we regard as great faults and weaknesses of character, is, nevertheless, acknowledged by all as a great, clear, and careful constitutional lawyer.—Det. Tribune.

—Bismarck, the real ruler of the German Empire, is represented to have spoken recently as follows concerning American affairs:—

“I always read a great deal about the United States. Their current history is a most attractive kaleidoscope. The colors may be sometimes repulsive, but they are always clear and well defined. And no matter how strangely distorted the picture may sometimes look, the last turn of the kaleidoscope always brings public opinion to the top. As everybody is allowed to say there what he pleases, it is sometimes difficult to discern there what a true expression of public opinion is. But it is sure to make itself felt truly and courageously in the end. Think of the strange things which occurred in New York. Dishonest officials were plundering the people’s money with astounding coolness. They relied on public suffrage to sustain their iniquities, and on bad judges to screen them. I hardly trusted my eyes when I read the details of the robberies that had been committed. Americans with whom I conversed confirmed everything, and they seemed hopeless about the future of their largest city. But their despondency was groundless, and honesty triumphed even there. There is a great deal of food for thought in those American events.”