p. 127 | News and Notes by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 25, 1893

News and Notes.

By Editor

FOR THE WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 18.

RELIGIOUS.

—Right Rev. Samuel Gregg, bishop of Cork, has been elected archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland.

—At the celebration of the foundation of a Catholic school at Liege, Belgium, on the 16th inst., a serious riot occurred between Catholic and Liberal students.

—The New York Presbytery has adopted a resolution recommending that students for the ministry shall not pursue studies in any seminary not approved by the General Assembly.

—St. Peter's Church at Rome contained an audience of 15,000 people on the 17th inst., while the pope celebrated the mass, and then blessed the people. Fourteen cardinals and the ministers of Spain, Austria, and Portugal, and the Russian envoy were present.

—Cardinal Gibbons disclaims the authorship of the circular ascribed to him, which conveys the idea that he intended to ask the Maryland State Legislature for a part of the public school fund to aid Catholic schools. However, its Catholic origin is not denied.

—On the 17th inst. a fight occurred in the Armenian Church at Providence, R. I., which was quelled by the police after the interior of the church had been wrecked and ten of the belligerents had been badly cut and bruised. The affair was the result of a factional feud.

—It is claimed that the disciples of Buddha number 450,000,000. There are 30,000 in Paris alone, and in England and America there is a considerable reaching out after the old delusion, which, since its popularization by the Parliament of Religions, is becoming a new fad.

—The San Francisco Presbytery has recommended that hereafter no one who has not completed a college course or its equivalent shall enter the theological seminary as a student. This is in harmony with the desire of the seminary faculty to elevate the educational tone of the institution.

—The suggestion by a prominent Jewish rabbi of San Francisco that the Midwinter Fair will not be complete without its congress, will very likely receive further encouragement. So far as any religious feature is concerned, the prominence gained by the antichristian religions at the Chicago congress will, no doubt, lead them to favor another boom of their systems.

—Purushotam Rao Telang, a high-caste Brahmin from India, delivered a lecture before a large audience at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Cal., last week, giving an account of the religious and other customs of his country. He translated his daily prayer as follows: "I meditate upon the adorable glory of that God who is the creator of this universe; may he send us enlightenment."

—A New York paper says that the principle in what is now known as the boycott was borrowed from the church by the trade unions, which have made a vigorous effort to introduce it into industrial society. The principle is born of that spirit of intolerance that characterized the church that was dominant in the Dark Ages; and it is coming to the front again, as the churches are becoming more disposed to invoke the aid of force in their various enterprises.

—The Interior says that "the lawful attitude toward a representative government is obedience to it within the limits of conscience," and adds: "This principle was one of the vitals of the Protestant Reformation. Hence it is within the limits of law and of loyalty to dissent or protest where the occasion is such as to justify or require it, and not only so, but it is a part of the duty of the citizen and of the Christian." This is sound doctrine, which most of the Protestant denominations will indorse until they come to the Sunday laws and kindred legislation, and then they begin to make exceptions.

—The editor of the Baptist Sentinel (Dayton, Wash.) refers to the fact that his associate pastor, some fifteen years ago, preached a sermon on the Sabbath question in Woodland, Cal., which was listened to by several Seventh-day Adventists, and none of their representative men have ever replied to it. This fact seems to be taken as evidence of the impregnable character of his position that the Edenic Sabbath was the first day of the week. There have been thousands of sermons to which our people have not replied directly, yet their literature abounds in explosions of every first-day sabbath argument ever invented. Our tract "The Identical Seventh Day" (Bible Students' Library No. 114), while not a direct reply to Mr. Prior's position, presents the truth in regard to the Edenic Sabbath in such a light as to leave no place for his first-day sophistry.

SECULAR.

—Di Crispi comes to the front once more as premier of Italy.

—The bill for the admission of Utah as a State has passed the lower house of Congress.

—On September 30, 1893, the U. S. Army consisted of 25,778 enlisted men and 2,144 officers.

—A band of fourteen Yaqui Indians from Mexico are now on the way to the San Francisco Fair.

—It is announced at Berlin that trichinae have been found in American hams. But that is not new.

—It is officially reported that 63 per cent. of the late World's Fair awards went to foreign exhibitors.

—The telegraph reports that a cyclone did much damage to property at Harrisburg, Ill., on the 16th inst.

—Dispatches from Albion and Carmi, Ill., and Mount Vernon and Evansville, Ind., report earthquake shocks on the 14th inst.

—It is reported that six hunters have been found frozen to death in the Pilchuck Mountains, sixty miles east of Mount Vernon, Wash.

—The Carnegie Iron and Steel Company is said to be preparing for another reduction in wages in anticipation of a lowering of the tariff.

—Several steamers engaged in the Pacific trade have been laid up until times are better, and some 300 men are thus thrown out of employment.

—It is claimed in Mexico that the insurrection in the States of Guerrero and Chihuahua is completely subdued, General Neri being now in prison awaiting trial.

—The Spanish campaign against the Riffian tribes that have threatened Melilla, Morocco, has been closed through a conference with the sultan's representative.

—Some Polish capitalists have decided to establish a beet sugar factory and refinery at Omaha, Neb., and bring out a colony of beet sugar farmers from Poland.

—At a banquet of soldiers in St. Petersburg last week forty guests partook of meat pie which contained stale meat, and ten of the number afterward died of cholera.

—It is announced that the large plant of the Maryland Steel Company at Baltimore has been closed for a year. Some Western concerns have bought its silence for $400,000.

—The western buffalo have become so nearly extinct that the recent discovery of a herd of two dozen in an uninhabited region of Colorado is heralded abroad as a wonderful incident.

—The French Chamber of Deputies has voted 800,000 francs for the increase of the police force. The increase is designed for surveillance of persons known to have revolutionary tendencies.

—The final survey for a ship canal across the Florida peninsula is about to be made. It will shorten the route from New Orleans to Atlantic Coast points and Europe about 1,000 miles.

—The exposition at Augusta, Ga., was addressed on the 12th inst. by Hon. Adlai Stevenson, Vice President of the United States. Two Cabinet officers, Secretaries Herbert and Smith, were also present.

—Great suffering is reported in the mining regions of the upper peninsula of Michigan, and a Detroit committee reports that $100,000 will be necessary to prevent actual starvation during the winter.

—Chris. Evans, the noted bandit, whose trial at Fresno, Cal., has been a prominent sensation for a month past, has been convicted of murder in the first degree, with sentence fixed at imprisonment for life.

—Five natives of Ceylon have arrived in San Francisco to prepare an exhibit for the Midwinter Fair. The exhibit of the far-famed island will consist principally of coffee, cocoa, tea, spices, laces, and embroidery.

—The Georgia Legislature has declared in favor of free coinage of silver, and denies the right of the national government to interfere with, restrict, or regulate the issue of paper currency by the authority of the State Legislature.

—Four Chinese laundrymen were burned to death in their beds in San Francisco on the 15th inst. They had all gone to sleep at 1 o'clock A.M., after a whiff at the opium pipe, leaving a red-hot stove in the room, as was their usual custom.

—At Portland, Me., on the 12th inst., fire destroyed property to the value of $150,000. On the same day, at Hammond, Ind., was another $150,000 conflagration. The latter was distillery property. Also on the 14th inst. fire destroyed property on Main Street, Buffalo, N. Y., valued at $750,000. On the 17th inst. fire destroyed the plant of the National Carbon Company at Cleveland, Ohio; loss, $160,000.

—The pupils of John Swett public school in San Francisco accumulated over a ton of coal and twenty-five sacks of potatoes and other provisions for the poor, by each one bringing a little. And this example has incited other schools to do likewise.

—A Buffalo, N. Y., dispatch of the 16th inst. says: "Heavy rains are melting the snow, and high winds from the lake have caused the flooding of five square miles in South Buffalo to a depth of seven feet. A thousand families have been driven from their homes."

—If the hungry people of San Francisco and this city can manage to hold out till Christmas, they will all get something to eat, for that one day is least. The preparations for that occasion will probably be quite extensive. So much for the adoration of a holiday.

—Amid all the national-bank wrecking so rife in the country the past year, one official—the president of the national bank at Little Rock, Ark.—has been sentenced to five years' imprisonment, and is allowed to give a $20,000 bond pending a review of the case by the Supreme Court.

—One of the escaped Russian exiles who recently arrived in San Francisco is already in jail, charged with burglary, having been caught in the act. This will modify, to some extent, the widespread sympathy that was expressed in their behalf when they arrived from Saghalin Island.

—A cowboy who held up and robbed a mail carrier at Chadron, Neb., has been sentenced to imprisonment for life by the Federal Court of the Omaha District. He secured just one copper cent by his desperate adventure, but the penalty is the same as though it had been a large amount.

—The Provisional Government of Hawaii still holds the fort, and assumes a determined attitude toward all opponents. Minister Thurston left San Francisco on the steamer of the 15th inst. for home. Representative Canadian business men are actively engaged in efforts to turn the tide of trade in that direction.

—It is stated that a new plan of railway tickets will be adopted in Hungary in December. The traveler will make out his own ticket, and the government will sell railway stamps and supply blank cards. The passenger will, when he desires to take a journey, write on a card the name of the starting point and destination, and affix as many stamps as the published list of fares calls for.

—A basking shark thirty-five feet long was caught in the nets of some fishermen at Monterey, Cal., on the 11th inst. Specimens of this, the largest known of the fish tribe, are very rare, and the British museum has a standing offer of $1,000 for the skin of one. The fishermen will get about 100 gallons of oil from the liver, and the remainder is placed at the disposal of Stanford University.

—Nine passenger conductors on the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway have been discharged by the receiver of the road for "knocking down" money received from passengers. The men have brought suit in the U. S. Court at Seattle to compel the receiver to prefer charges before the Brotherhood of Trainmen. It is thought the suit is for the purpose of finding out the source of the receiver's information against the conductors.

—The latest advices from Rio Janeiro indicate no immediate prospect of peace. The government had regained Governor's Island, recently captured by the rebels. Rebel sympathizers were being thrown in prison in the city. The rebel Admiral Mello, with his flag ship, had returned to Rio harbor, and fighting was still progressing, with considerable damage to property. There was talk of the foreign powers recognizing the rebels. The American admiral has notified captains of American merchant vessels that they will not be protected in landing goods, and if their crews go ashore and get killed, he will testify against the captains on charges of manslaughter.