Items of General Interest
By Editor
THE address of Elder J. Fulton will, until further notice, be East Portland, Or., box B 2. OUR correspondent who wrote us some days since asking to be referred to the Scripture evidence of the personality of Satan will find, we think, a satisfactory answer in an article on page 738 of this paper. SOME of our General Conference delegates are returning. We have had the pleasure of meeting Brother J. I. Tay, who is full of enthusiasm as regards the missionary ship soon to be built. He hopes it will be built on this coast. The isles have waited long for God's law (Isa. 42:4), but the time has come when, in the providence of God, it should be carried to them. We shall praise God for the advent of the missionary ship. OUR co-laborer and co-editor, Brother C. P. Bollman, left Oakland for New York City, via the Northern Pacific route, the evening of December 1. Brother Bollman goes for the purpose of taking editorial responsibility in connection with the American Sentinel, which will be published from that city from the first of January. We are sad to lose his counsel, help, and fellowship here; but he will still continue to contribute to this journal. Our prayer is that God may abide with him and give him the needed help and wisdom in the new field before him. MR. C. H. JONES, the manager of the office of the Pacific Press, sailed from New York on the steamship City of Paris, November 27, to assist by his counsel in the establishment of the branch office in London, the great commercial center of the world, and is at this writing, December 1, yet on shipboard. It is important that an office should be established there from which the truth shall go out to many of earth's millions over which Britain has control. Brother Jones will meet with untried difficulties there. Will our readers pray for him and those who are already engaged in that great field, that God may give them wisdom? IN commenting upon Colonel Ingersoll's view of marriage, which is that "the death of love is the end of marriage. Love is natural. . . . Wherever love is it is pure," the Catholic Review well says:— "Nothing fouler than this could pen contrive. The avowed apostles of free-love gave precisely the same definition. The outcome of its adoption by society would be that whenever a sensual man or weak and vain woman believes 'love' dead, that instant divorce becomes not only licit, but dutiful. 'Love' may 'die' because a husband cannot buy as handsome a fall bonnet as his wife would like. On his side, 'love' may 'die' the moment he sees another who rouses in his lower nature passions that are 'natural.' Forthwith divorce for either or both. Forthwith go the children born in the previous union, wherever a court may direct; and if the precept herein implied should be carried to its complete conclusion, the State would have to return to the cruel and heartless impersonalism of Lycurgus, and create vast nurseries for the care of offspring whose parents had ceased to 'love' each other." PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D., in speaking of the revision of the (Presbyterian) Westminster Confession, is reported to have said: "I am in favor of dropping the reference to the pope as 'antichrist.'" And the majority of Protestant divines are so blinded that they will probably respond, Amen. But whether the declaration be appropriate to a confession of faith or not, it is nevertheless true that the pope is antichrist, as proved by scriptural history. THE London Freethinker is authority for the statement that during the late illness of Mr. Bradlaugh, the noted English atheist, Christians offered prayers for his recovery. Referring to this fact, Freethought says:— "At Northampton the Rev. R. B. Hull prayed for the sick atheist in the parish church, and the same proceeding occurred in several of the non-conformist chapels. One Father Ignatius, with whom Mr. Bradlaugh once debated in the Hall of Science, closed an eight days' mission in the Kensington town hall by entreating Jehovah to restore the health of the atheist. Mr. Bradlaugh has long espoused the cause of India, where his sickness was heard of with profound sorrow, and a telegram from Simla stated that 'universal prayer' was being made in his behalf." THE Pittsburg Commercial recently contained the abstract of a lecture by Professor Comtois, an ex-Catholic priest, who, in speaking of Rome's influence in politics, is reported thus:— "He said the Catholic Church was now at work trying to gain power in this country by assisting emigrants, and that the bishop of St. Paul was the president of an emigration society which had obtained large tracts of land in Nebraska, Dakota, and Arizona, which they were populating with Catholics, with a view of getting voters who would do the bidding of the priests and bishops. He said a society in Baltimore was sending missionaries among the colored people of the South for a similar purpose." The above is no doubt the mildest statement of facts, repeated so often that Protestants regard them as thrice-told tales, unworthy of notice; and Rome reaps the benefits of Protestant apathy. THERE is one characteristic of faith-cures, so-called Christian science cures, faith-cure homes, and healers, etc., which makes one question the spirit they are of, the source from which they draw their power; and that is the way it is advertised and puffed, the way its advocates pose before the public. We never read of our Lord Jesus Christ, or his apostles, advertising themselves as faith-healers, or their meetings as faith-cure meetings. The power of God was often present to heal through their instrumentality. Their highest object was not to preach Christ as a temporal healer, but as an eternal Redeemer from all sin and the consequences of sin. Immunity from the ills and trials of this life we are not promised as long as we live in the flesh; but we are, if faithful, promised complete deliverance therefrom when Christ our King shall come. THE adage that "none are so blind as those who will not see," is well exemplified in the indifference, or indeed almost complacency, with which the great mass of Protestants view the progress of Romanism, not only in this country, but throughout the world. The following from the Christian at Work relative to the expression of the late Catholic congress concerning the "rights" of the pope will serve to illustrate:— "In this the Catholics are simply blowing against a whirlwind. The sixty millions of Protestants in this country heartily favor Italian unity, and are as heartily glad that Italy is free from the Alps to the Adriatic. What the congress may say on this matter will not affect public opinion one whit in this country or in Italy." In expressing their disapproval of the course pursued by the Italian Government toward the "Holy See," and in insisting that respect must be shown for the "rights" and property of "the church" within the territories of which, as it is claimed, she has been unjustly despoiled, the Congress of Baltimore has only followed the example of similar bodies in the principal countries of Europe, and the influence of these utterances is not so insignificant as some would have us suppose. Italy is far from secure in her position, and her people, which are largely Catholic, are far from satisfied with the attitude of their government towards the pope. Ever since the accession of Leo XIII. to the triple crown, the Papacy has been gaining steadily in influence, and the church has been gaining even more rapidly in numbers, especially in our own country; and to-day it is nothing short of folly to close our eyes to these facts. It is simply bombast and bravado to sneer at the power of the Papacy, and to scout the idea of the possibility, or even the probability, of the return of the pope to temporal power. REV. JOHN JASPER, a colored clergyman of Richmond, Va., some years ago brought himself into national notice by declaring that "the sun do move" around the earth. But more recently Mr. Jasper rendered himself conspicuous again. This time it was, as related by the Denver News, by declining to join a number of his brother ministers of the same race in a circular requesting the colored people to vote for General Mahone in the late election. He says he so refused because the church is no place for politics, because there should be no mixing of politics and religion. He does not allow anything of the kind in his church when he is at home. He says: "The duty of a minister of the gospel is to serve the Lord on high and obey his commandments to preach the gospel in order to save souls." And is not the old colored preacher correct?—He certainly is. By this we do not mean that a man should not act conscientiously in political matters, but that when men go to the polls they should go, not as members of this or that denomination, but as honest men to vote as they believe is for the best interest of the commonwealth.