Current Notices and Comments
By Editor
JOHN B. GOUGH is engaged to lecture in this city in June, but, singularly enough, those who have direction of his lectures do not let him speak on temperance. Wherefore? WE have just received a new lot of books, comprising many valuable helps to Bible study. More extended notice of these will be given hereafter; but we are preparing a new catalogue, which will be sent free to any address, on application. Send for one. THE Nineteenth Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics' Institute, of San Francisco, will be held August 5 to September 6, 1884. These exhibitions of the resources of the State are a matter of interest to both producers and users, and this Institute is one of which San Francisco may justly be proud. WE frequently see notices in the papers that in such and such places the number of saloons has been greatly reduced by a "high license." That information does not much interest us. Will some of these papers now please inform us how much the amount of liquor drank has been reduced by high license? We do not care if the number of saloons has been reduced five hundred per cent., if the remainder sell as much liquor as they all together did before. Our opinion is that the high license is a profitable dodge for the saloons that remain. Where has high license so reduced the supply that the demand for liquor could not be met? We anxiously wait for an answer. IT has been remarked, and is somewhat remarkable, that Majors, who was hanged in this city May 23, for murder committed in Santa Clara County, was not the recipient of flowers, as is usual in such cases, nor did the women crowd around the jail with expressions of sympathy. We state this to the credit of Oakland, though it has been suggested that it was owing to the fact that he did not kill his wife: as wife-murderers have shared largely in the kind care of "silly women" on this coast. AN article in the Banner of Light, by a well-known Spiritualist, says of Spiritualism: "It has nothing to do with the Bible, nothing to do with Christianity, nothing to do with theology." This is solid truth; but, unfortunately, many Spiritualists and many professed Christians are showing a strong disposition to "pool their issues," by which the truth will be reproached. THERE is a certain party of professed Adventists and Sabbath-keepers—repudiating, however, the name and faith of Seventh-day Adventists—who have built their hopes high on certain correspondents or friends in California, who took great delight in circulating their papers, tracts, and calumnies. Of the three principal ones now in our mind, two lost their interest in religious matters some time ago. And now comes forward the last of the three and publicly renounces the seventh-day Sabbath. There is something peculiarly interesting in the case of this one. As the others, he manifested a strong hatred of Sister White, and when she predicted that he would give up the Sabbath, he declared that he was going to prove that it was a false prophecy! But he has grown weary of proving it, and joined with those who bitterly oppose the law of God. Another interesting feature of this case is, that he has found true gospel liberty (?) since he renounced the fourth commandment. He walked in the bondage and darkness of the law nine years, he said, but now has emerged into the light amongst the sanctified ones! We were aware all the time that he was in bondage, because he kept only the letter of the law. It takes more than a nominal observance of the Sabbath to give freedom to such a spirit as he possessed. But his present liberty is not that of Ps. 119: 45, and Jas. 1: 25; 2: 9-12.