News and Miscellany

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1875

News and Miscellany.

-Heavy frosts have visited New Hampshire, September 12. Water froze in several places.

-Fifteen thousand animals are affected by the foot and mouth disease in Dorsetshire, England.

-The largest library in the United States is the Library of Congress, which contains 274,000 volumes.

-The Methodist Church has over one hundred and forty Christian women engaged daily in spreading the gospel in India.

-The announcement is made that arrangements will soon be completed whereby the New York mail will reach San Francisco in six days.

-Recently two inkstands and a pen were dug up at Pompeii. The pen is of metal, and made almost similar in shape to our quill pens.

-There lives in Griffin, Ohio, a gentleman one hundred and sixteen years old, who reads the newspapers yet. He has voted for every President except Washington.

PARIS, September 13.—A water-spout, causing terrible loss of life and destruction of property occurred during the storm yesterday, at Montpelier, in the Department of Herault. Over sixty persons were drowned.

-The Church of England Temperance Society propose to erect temperance stalls in the streets of London, for the sale of temperance drinks, cakes, and bread and butter. An exhibition of one of the stalls was recently given in the grounds of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

-The Catholic riot in Montreal still continues. The French Canadians are making systematic preparations to prevent any further attempt at Guibord's burial. The Catholics oppose Guibord's burial in the lot which belonged to him in their cemetery on the ground that he was a member of a society of free-thinkers which had been denounced by the Bishop.

-Judge Gilbert, of the Supreme Court of Brooklyn, (N. Y.) renders a decision unfavorable to the colored people who have tried to force the teachers to admit their children to the (white) public schools. The Court holds that the common schools are a public charity, that the benefits conferred by them are a free gift from the State, and like every other donor, the State may prescribe in what manner and upon what condition the gift may be enjoyed.

-Numerous important public offices in Bohemia are held by Jews. Dr. Bernstein, of Prague, chief physician of the military staff, has been elected almost unanimously as dean of the Academic College of Physicians. Dr. Knight Von Weiner (Vice-President of the Jewish community of Prague) is President of the Bohemian Bar; and Mr. M. Dormitzer, for a long time previous to his removal to Vienna, was President of the Bohemian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

-As evidence of the advancement of the negroes of the South, and that their condition should not be considered a political issue, Mr. Nordhoff, giving the result of his investigations in Georgia, says: "It is not difficult to hear of instances of abuse; but the best and conclusive proof that these are only sporadic cases, and that in general the colored people are safe in their lives and property, is found in an official report of the Comptroller-General of the State for 1874, giving the character and value of property tax-payers for that year. The number of colored polls returned was 83,318. These returned an aggregate value of taxable property amounting to $6,157,798, on which they actually paid $30,788 in taxes. They owned 238,769 acres of agricultural land, and city and town property to the amount of $1,200,115. Now, remember, that these people were slaves only nine years before; that they owned, when they obtained their freedom, in 1865, absolutely nothing."

-Our readers will perhaps smile when we tell them that [a dearth of theologians] is beginning to be the cry in Germany. But it is the truth; and this danger is the now much discussed theme of ecclesiastical and even political organs. To judge from German commentaries, and the great host of theological works published in this land of religious thought, and biblical investigation, one would suppose that it was surfeited with them; and in a sense, perhaps, this is even the case—for the Germans have made so profound a science of biblical exegesis that it is, we fear too frequently confined to the learned letter, to the neglect of the sanctified spirit. The trouble is that German students no longer flock to the theological schools, and these are now so thinly attended that there are fears expressed in some quarters that the theological faculties will find themselves without occupation; and the desire is to avoid, by all possible means, this public calamity. Why this abnormal state of things has increased so greatly of late years it is not so easy to explain. Some attribute it to the scanty pay of the parson—but this is better than it used to be when crowds of young men filled the seats before theological teachers. Others declare the cause to be the wide divergence between the liberal and the orthodox tendency within the church; but this latitude ought to act as an attraction to young men, by giving them a choice among divergent opinions.—N. Y. Advocate.