News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 21, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 32.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—It is stated that the Book of Mormon has been translated into Spanish.

—It is reported that Spiritualism is making great advance in New Zealand.

—The Salvation Army in Rochester, ten men and eight women, were arrested on a recent Sunday for singing in the streets.

—The amount of the Hanson Place Brooklyn M. E. Sunday-school missionary collection for the past year is $2,275.41.

—An agent of the Massachusetts Bible Society, who recently canvassed Brockton, found thirty-six families who did not possess a Bible.

—The Salvation Army has been voted a public nuisance at Salem, Mass., drawing about it in its parades the worst element of the community. The authorities will put a stop to it.

—A Zulu church in South Africa has the following regulation: “No member of this church shall be permitted to drink the white man’s grog, or native beer, nor to touch it with his lips.” They are ahead of many churches in our own land.

—The Roman Catholics of Ireland have spent $30,000,000 for the support of the Church of Rome during the past eighteen years. The servitude which they willingly undergo is worse and more expensive than that about which there is so much agitation.

—An exchange says that Canon Wilberforce has had a baptistry put into his new church at Southampton, England. The reason which the Canon gives is guileless enough. He does it, he says, because the prayer book recognizes immersion as a proper mode of baptism! It is a very generous thing on the part of the prayer book for it to “recognize” immersion. It is to be presumed that it also “recognizes” the Bible as a book of considerable worth.

—The Christian at Work says: “A prayer hospital is to be opened in Erie, Pa., with great religious ceremony. A large building has been secured by a number of ladies who prefer prayer to physic, and it is fitted up for the reception of citizens given up to death by physicians.” We believe in prayer, and in prayer for the healing of disease, but we don’t find any Scriptural warrant for setting up a prayer shop, where people may be prayed for at so much a head.

—And now even the Spiritualists are posing as martyrs. Hon. Thomas R. Hazard, in a letter to the Pioneer of Light, says: “All great truths have ever been established only through the persecution of their instruments. The Quakers, who were the Spiritualists of the seventeenth century, died by scores in prisons and on the gallows; and it now looks as if the Spiritualism of the nineteenth century was destined to gain a permanent footing after the same manner.” Bah!

—At the North Carolina Baptist Sunday-school convention, last month, Dr. Chaplin, of Texas, gave the following advice and incident, which may be read by teachers: “Have variety. Go over and over the same truth, if need be, but not usually in the same words. Emphasize a certain set of principles, but not by a certain unvarying set of stories. I had a teacher in my school, of whom his scholars complained for having told the story of Joseph one hundred and thirty times. They said they enjoyed it very well the first thirty times; it was the extra hundred that made it tiresome.” The teacher that could tell a story one hundred and thirty times without varying the style must be a wonder.

—It is quite likely that there will be a reaction from the habit of giving nearly every man who preaches, especially if he has a city congregation, the title of D. D. At any rate it is to be hoped that there will be a reaction, and the way the papers are handling the subject gives reason for cherishing the hope. The Christian at Work says: “Too often a degree represents not the fact of desert, but the amount of influence one can control among the trustees of the college. The world understands that the degree has cost only a little trouble in securing a vote in the college Board and afterwards enough dabs of printer’s ink to make D. D. and LL.D. As in the civil service—which is to be—merit should decide the bestowing of a degree. What wonder if the community smiles when somebody is doctored? It is sometimes like putting a big brass door-plate on a nail keg.”

SECULAR.

—Encouraging reports are given of the cotton crop in Lincoln County, Nevada.

—The telegraph reports that several villages in Hungary have been swept away by floods.

—The Fort Cameron military reservation, U. T., is to be sold in a body to the highest bidder.

—A married lady died in Sacramento, Cal., last week from the effects of arsenic taken to beautify her complexion.

—Battalions of British Indian troops under relief orders for England are to go to Egypt, and the Indian Government opposes the depletion of the army in India.

—People on the Atlantic Coast, from Maryland to Maine, were considerably excited on the 10th inst. by an earthquake shock, more or less severe in different localities. No serious damage resulted.

—The business portion of the town of Anoka, Minn., was destroyed by fire on the 16th inst. The loss is estimated at $1,000,000. This is the second time the town has passed such a fiery ordeal.

—The railroad which the British are building for Suakin across the Soudan Desert to Berber, is to be only eighteen inches gauge, but the cars will be six feet wide and will carry twelve passengers each.

—The Minneapolis, Minn., Common Council has established prohibition in spots. In certain sections of the city where the people are almost unanimously against saloons, it is ordered that no saloons be licensed.

—An analysis of the water of St. Henri, a suburb of Marseilles, in which the cholera has appeared in great force, shows the presence of microbes from the contamination of sewage. Whole families have been swept away.

—The German Admiralty has authorized German fishermen in the North Sea to use firearms should English fishermen molest them; and the coast guard have been instructed to arrest the crews of invading English fishing vessels.

—The British Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has announced that diplomatic relations have been resumed with Mexico, and that an agreement has been signed with that country placing England upon the most favored footing.

—The appearance of a curious species of grasshopper is reported on a ranch near Stockton. They rise in a cloud twenty or thirty feet ahead of the header and settle down again into the grain. The wings of these curious insects are white and their bodies are light brown.

—The town and vicinity of Lower Lake, Lake Co., Cal., were visited by a succession of earthquake shocks during the afternoon and night of the 11th inst. Brick chimneys were thrown down, and windows broken, and type in the Bulletin office was pied. The people are reported to have been much frightened.

—Frank James, the ex-bandit, emerged from obscurity in Missouri, the other day, to head a movement against the renomination of W. H. Wallace, the courageous prosecuting attorney of Jackson County, for whom James and other outlaws have a natural dislike. Wallace was overwhelmingly indorsed in the primaries, and James has again sunk out of sight.

—On the 10th inst., masked men attacked a meeting of Mormons in Lewis County, Tenn., and there and in the vicinity shot and killed four elders. Two young men who opposed the marauders, a woman behind whom one of the elders took refuge, and one of the assailants, were also killed. The affair caused great excitement in the neighborhood, and detectives are on the track of the criminals.

—LONDON, August 13.—The thunder-storms which swept over the north of England and Scotland yesterday were of almost unexampled severity. Many buildings in Edinburgh, Leith, and other cities were nearly demolished by lightning. Dundee was enveloped in dense darkness, and for an hour traffic was suspended. Several persons were killed by lightning, among the number Earl Lauderdale, who was overtaken by the storm while out riding.

—Considerable excitement was created in Iowa City, Ia., on the night of the 13th inst., by an attempted mob defense of some brewers who were being tried for violation of the prohibitory law. They imprisoned and tarred the prosecuting attorney, and evidently designed to take his life, and also the life of the prosecuting witness, but were finally foiled by the officers of the law. It was a most disgraceful affair, but a characteristic argument of the liquor defenders.