King Barleycorn by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 6, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 35.

King Barleycorn

By Editor

King Barleycorn.—The Western Watchman truly says that in the prize-fight at Reno neither the white race nor the black race won, but “King Barleycorn” was “the champion of champions.” “Drink is suicide.” But it is not as the Watchman thoughtlessly observes, “nothing else and nothing more.” If it affected but the one who drank, it would not be so bad; but it affects others, mother, father, wife, children, community. It is a thief, a robber, a despoiler of virtue and godliness, a wrecker of homes, murderer. It is wholly bad, a thousand times worse than the late King Leopold.

The “Detroit News Tribune” of June 26 says: “When a man loses his faith in the inspiration of the Bible, he quits reading it. . . . Higher Criticism has talked a lot about what it has contributed to the appreciation of the Bible; but the people who have gained their appreciation of the Bible from the Higher Critics have, for the most part, got too busy at other things to read the Bible any more.” It seems strange that a secular paper realizes what religious journals seldom comprehend.

The good Catholic editor of the “Western Watchman,” who is touring Scotland, thus pays his respects to John Knox, the stalwart Scotch Reformer: “I saw where John Knox died and the spot in the public street where tradition says he was buried. I was glad to see that the old villain was buried.” We wonder if he would not prefer to see his remains burned and ashes scattered as were those of another John some centuries ago. Such language from a Protestant respecting a great Catholic would be called by our Catholic friends “intolerance.”

Mr. Levy S. Richards has resigned the editorship of the Rochester Evening Times because his publishers wished him to support a machine candidate for Congress. This is nothing extraordinary, yet how seldom similar cases are reported. He was doing nothing except his duty.

A young man in Berkeley, Elliott McMillan by name, of the state School of Mines, had 20,000 volts of electricity passed through him, and he fell as one dead. But in a short time he came to himself uninjured except for a burned hand and foot.