p. 1 | Items of Current News by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 13.

Items of Current News

By Editor

THE German Government has issued a white book disavowing the acts of Consul Knappe in Samoa. Bismarck declares that Knappe had no authority either to declare war or martial law.

COMPLAINT having been made to the Pope by an agent of the French Government of the support given to General Boulanger, Leo is reported to have said that it would be impossible for him to interfere in the matter.

IT has been stated that England's drink bill is diminishing, but the facts are that it footed up $623,019,695 last year against $621,736,845 in 1887. The amount per capita declined, however, sixty cents, namely, from $16.80 to $16.20.

THE Shanghai correspondent of the London Standard says that the number of deaths caused by the famine in Shan Tun is appalling. Many of the inhabitants are committing suicide through despondency, there being still three months to wait for the harvest.

D. L. MOODY has given notice that he will begin on the 4th inst. in Chicago a convention of Christian workers, similar to that held in the summer at Northfield. These meetings will continue from thirty to sixty days, and "instruction will be given by well-known leaders of Christian thought and action."

"THIS seems to be rather a Presbyterian administration," remarks a Washington correspondent of a prominent New York paper, and so it seems, for it is stated that the President and all of his Cabinet except Rusk and Proctor are Presbyterians. Mr. Proctor and Vice-President Morton are Episcopalians, and Mr. Rusk, it is understood, makes no profession whatever.

DR. RIORDAN, Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, says that the people of the United States are drifting "into deism. The religious bodies outside the Catholic Church are suffering greater losses than we have to bear. On the whole, we are holding our own. It is, I think, beginning to be generally recognized that the time is coming when we shall simply have two forms of belief face to face—deism and Catholicism."

Well, if that is our fate, the former is as good as the latter, one is unchristian, the other antichristian. We prefer, however, the truth of God and the religion of Christ. Its adherents may be few, but they will triumph over all opposition.

According to Public Opinion there are 1,248 Young Men's Christian Associations in America, 622 in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1,392 in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, 200 in Japan, and 553 in 18 other countries. "It is an interesting fact," says that journal, "that there is an organization at Nazareth, where Christ lived for thirty years, and at Jerusalem, where he was crucified."

SOME of the most earnest supporters of the bill which recently passed the Missouri Legislature, declaring that only the English language shall be taught in the public schools of that State, were Germans. One of these is reported as saying that there is no more reason why German should be taught in the public schools than that the State should furnish instruction in Hungarian, Chaldaiic, or Chinese.

IT is announced from New York that Evangelist Yatman, who has recently returned to that city from a trip through the West, is now busy with a scheme which he is pleased to call a college on wheels. He proposes to obtain a number of Pullman cars and arrange sections in them for men who are to receive students in the work of evangelization. He intends to take the cars and men over the entire world, preaching the gospel wherever they go. The experiment will first be tried with fifty students. Mr. Yatman says he already has fully 1,000 applications.

THE controversy between Canadian Catholics and Protestants over the award to the former of $400,000 in lieu of estates confiscated by George III. grows more bitter. The Toronto Globe has published what purports to be the oath taken by all Jesuits, in which they swear allegiance to the Pope and renounce all allegiance to any "heretical king, prince, or sect named Protestant." For the publication of this oath the Globe has been sued for libel, and thus there is a prospect that the vexed question of the Jesuit's oath will be judicially settled, though it is too much to hope that Jesuits will tell the truth in regard to the matter, even under oath. Their mental reservation tenet will excuse them for any amount of perjury for the good of the church.

THE following from the Guatemala Star of January 5 presents the true type of the Catholic page-papal Sunday, as that day has been observed much of the time for the last thirteen hundred years:—

"The bull-fight of last Sunday was more than usually exciting. One man had an arm broken, and two horses were killed by being gored in the breast by the enraged and desperate toro."

The same paper speaks of a theater and an election held that day. What a comedy it shows to be the so-called increasing religiousness and enlightened civilization of these days. Not that the degrading bull-fight is any more brutalizing on Sunday than any other day, but it shows that the people have not conscience enough to keep an institution which they hold as sacred. A civil law to compel Sunday observance would not help the sin any. Their hearts would be in the bull-fight just the same. And this, after all, is in harmony with the true spirit of the origin of Sunday sacredness.