News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 13, 1872

News and Miscellany.

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

STRIKES are now occurring in France, and are put down by military force and the shedding of blood. The amelioration of the condition of the laborer is the great problem of the times—a problem, however, whose solution cannot be reached by leagued refusals to labor and combinations to compel idleness.—Battle Creek Journal.

DISTURBANCE IN THE SUN.—Familiar as we all are with the great luminary of the solar system, astronomers at this particular epoch were never so vividly excited in regard to its physical character. Since the invention of the spectroscope, they have found we have been profoundly ignorant in a branch of science considered quite firmly established. Within the past few months, observers have witnessed gigantic displays of force in the metallic luster of the sun’s atmosphere, far more wonderful than any phenomena heretofore seen or suspected in far off celestial regions. There are frequent burstings or explosions on the surface of the sun, apparently, which rend a path through its shining envelope at the rate of seventy thousand miles in a single minute. Electricity is a slow coach in comparison.

A remarkable waterspout occurred last week, on the Central City stage road, near Denver. The torrent of water struck a carriage containing G. Vierden, his wife, her sister, and a girl, who reside five or six miles up the canon and were returning home. The two latter were drowned. The body of Miss Vierden was found some three miles below the scene of the disaster covered with sand and debris. The road was badly washed out and rendered impassable.—N. Y. Observer.

It is now proposed to convert the Egyptian pyramids into weather signal stations. We have only to wait, now, for the rushing of the locomotive through the Euphrates, and for a way station where the garden of Eden arose, and there will be nothing left for wonder itself to be astonished at.

NEARLY all the Manchester (England) Dissenting ministers, orthodox and heterodox, lately met at a soiree, at which Dr. McKerrow, an influential United Presbyterian pastor, made a speech, urging that their denominations, including Unitarians, should act in concert in Sunday-school matters, and once a year hold a communion service in common.

HENRY WARD BEECHER says he is inclined to leave the Baptists, Episcopalians, Unitarians, Catholics, and Jews, to get to Heaven in their own way, and without his guidance, and to spend the year 1872 in promoting the fruits of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,” against which there is in none of these denominations any law.

AN editorial article has appeared in the New York Observer on the subject of ministerial support, in which the ground is squarely taken that the supply exceeds the demand among the Presbyterians, an opinion indorsed by many of the readers of that paper. They have 4,347 ministers, 2,740 of whom are not engaged in any ministerial work, either as pastors or temporary supplies.

Liberty vs. License.

In the recent debate on the “Permissive Prohibitory Liquor Law,” in the British Parliament, an English Bishop declared he would “rather have England free than sober.” The preference for a liberty which means license to do wrong, over a law which restrains appetite, is of long standing, even from a time “whereto the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” Long ago it cost us paradise, and has been the cause of all earth’s trouble ever since. The signs of the times are discouraging to the friends of this sort of liberty.—Christian Statesman.

As to the manner in which the Metropolitan Methodist church in Washington was made at once national and sacred, a writer in the Christian Advocate gives full particulars:

“To give it a national character, seats were set apart for the President and his Cabinet officers of the army and navy, and pews in the name of each State for their representatives in Congress. And, to add to its sacredness as the house of God, cedar was brought from Lebanon and olive from Mount Olivet for the altar, pulpit, and other wood-work of the church. Also marble from the debris of Solomon’s Temple, for the pavement of the vestibule or outer court.”

What I Have Seen.

I HAVE seen a woman, professing to love Christ more than the world, clad in a silk dress costing $75; making up and trimming of same, $40; bonnet (or apology for one), $35; velvet mantle, $150; diamond ring, $500; watch, chain, pin and other trappings, $300; total, $1100—all hung upon one frail, dying worm. I have seen her at a meeting in behalf of homeless wanderers in New York wipe her eyes upon an expensive embroidered handkerchief at the story of their sufferings, and, when the contribution-box came round, take from a well-filled portmonnaie of costly workmanship twenty-five cents to aid the society formed to promote their welfare.

“Ah,” thought I, “dollars for ribbons, and pennies for Christ.”

I have seen a man who had long been a member of the visible church rush to his business after a hastily swallowed breakfast, without a prayer in his family for God’s blessing through the day, spend hours in the eager pursuit of that which perishes with the using, speaking not a word save of stocks, of bonds and mortgages, and when business hours were over, return to his home exhausted and petulant, to turn away from a sad story of want and suffering with, “I am tired, and cannot bear it!” I have seen him sleep away his evening without a pleasant word for wife or children, and retire to rest with no more apparent thought of God, his Maker, than if his meeting him at the last great day were an idle tale. “Ah,” thought I, “days and years for mammon, but not a moment for Christ.”