Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 11, 1877
THE OUTLOOK.
By Uriah Smith
The following article on “The Commune,” describes the nature of a dangerous element which is in existence and growing all over the world. There are said to be forty-eight journals in Germany alone devoted to the advocacy of communistic principles, and one of these journals has a circulation of a hundred thousand copies. The Socialistic party is comparatively strong in other European countries. And as it is an international organization, it counts largely on America. Since the recent strike in this country with its accompanying riot, pillage and arson, it is ascertained that these troubles can be traced to the International Society of the United States, and that the great masses of American workingmen are united in this secret organization. Surely the elements are rapidly accumulating for a time of trouble such as never was. Dan. 12:1.
The articles which we publish in connection with this, are also full of significance. Read the article on “Official Plunder.” What stability can there be in a government, when the great mass of its public officers are thieves and robbers. And this evil, says the article, has increased so rapidly of late, that the cases of the conscientious discharge of duty are the exceptions and subjects of remark.
Then we have the fact that the present is stamped as emphatically the “age of profanity.” What then must be the condition of the hearts of men? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
The “sad report” from the mining regions of Pennsylvania shows what the greed and oppression of capitalists are doing. Tens of thousands of men with their families on the verge of starvation, in this land of plenty, is a fearful commentary on our social condition.
With all these facts before us, the outlook from the Watch Tower is such as to cause all thinking men to consider what these things indicate in regard to the future. In the light of God’s prophetic word, only, can these signs be read aright. The end is near. U. S.
THE COMMUNE.
DESPITE the infamy with which they covered themselves in 1871, the Communists are yet secretly organized and by no means despicable in numbers. Through the Internationale they correspond with affiliated societies, not only in the Continental States, but also in England and America. They are recruited from the worst elements, such as have no sympathy with the existing order of things, and who desire a social as well as political revolution. They are as hostile to the Republic of the United States as to the most absolute despotism. They, in fact, hate it more than any other, as its demonstration of the possibility of self-government prevents the success of Communism. If they could destroy it they would have removed the last obstacle in their way, and would force the adoption of their own theories as the sole means of securing complete individual liberty and universal equality of property and rights. Under their system there would be no rich men, because all property would be held in common, and the earnings of each would go for the support of all. In other words, individual property would cease to exist. To any one not bereft of reason it is easy to see that this would lead to the extinction of personal enterprise, to the arrest of the progressive march of the age, to moral stagnation, and to social degradation.
Communism is in full play in Russia, and there it has had an opportunity to display its power for good and evil. It has covered that empire with a dense torpidity; it has destroyed individualism, and has kept all its members on the same level, and has checked the ambition for a higher and better state of things. The individual has been sacrificed to the community, and no one can rise, be his genius or talent what it may. A more certain mode of debasing the human species could not well be devised. It is the relentless foe of whatever has contributed to the prosperity, happiness, and development of modern States and peoples; and worse than all, it is in conflict with every principle of republican freedom of ancient and modern times. The right of the individual to the unfettered exercise of his own powers, to the gains of his industry, and to the acquisition of property, which is the essence of true republicanism, is denied by Communism. It is a standing conspiracy against progress, liberty, and Christian civilization.
The Internationale is a secret organization, with salaried officers and agents actively at work in Europe and America, the declared enemy of the political institutions of every country and every religion, atheistical, anarchial, and subversive of established notions of right and justice. When the mot d'ordre is given to stir up strife, to raise mobs, to kindle insurrections against governments, it must be obeyed. Its orators are specially instructed to denounce corporations, the accumulations of capitalists, the right of anybody to rule but the Communists, and to advocate the redistribution of property, the abolition of all distinctions created by individual effort, and the entire re-organization of society. One of the leading Internationalists recently boasted that the American Republic would ere long be supplanted by Communism, and that as there would then be no capital there could be no further strife between capital and labor.
One of the members of the French Commune thus defines its objects: “Their philosophy is atheism, materialism—the negation of all religion. Their political programme is absolute individual liberty by means of the suppression of government and the division of nationalities into communes more or less federated. Their political economy consists essentially in the dispossession, without compensation, of the present holders of capital, and in assignment of the coin, land, etc., to associations of workingmen.”
I ask you, citizens of the greatest Republic of modern times, if you are willing to surrender your noble institutions for such a system of villainy? Are you, descendants of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, to unlearn all that the wisdom of your Revolutionary sages has taught you, and to become the pupils and followers of the madmen, who, in 1871, acted more like savage beasts than human beings, and attempted the destruction of the most beautiful city of Europe? Wherever the International Society is in operation it will be a fomenter of disorder; for its aim is, in the words of one of its most eminent leaders, “the suppression of government.” It will take advantage of every commotion to widen the breach between the different classes of society, and it will enlist in its service all who are the enemies of established authority, and who, like the Communists, hope to live on the labor and earnings of others.
The Commune would not have obtained control of Paris but for the treachery and demoralization of the National Guard. The city had hardly been evacuated by the Germans before the worst elements of the Paris population came to the front. They swarmed into the center of the city from their hiding places in the batignolles, the Faubourg San Antoine, and the quarries of Montmartre, demanding bread, money, and the punishment of the aristocrates. In their speech this is a general term, meaning all decent people who live genteelly on the means they have accumulated by lives of honest industry. Their ranks were recruited from the prisons, from the lazar-houses, and the haunts of crime. Having established a mockery of a government at the Hotel de Ville, they closed the gates of Paris, refused to allow the army to enter, and declared themselves the rulers of France. Commissions were organized to hunt up suspected persons, to administer justice on the spot, to shoot, to hang, and put to death at will. The ordinary forms of justice were dispensed with as too tardy in their movements. Respectable citizens were dragged from their dwellings, subjected to a few interrogatories by a gang of sans culottes, pronounced guilty, whether the evidence was exculpatory or not, placed against a wall, and then shot down. This done, the same ceremony was performed elsewhere with the same accompaniments. The Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Darboy, was seized and held as a hostage at first, only, at last, to be finally murdered. Not a citizen eminent for public or private virtue whose life was not in danger from these sanguinary despots of mob rule.
Base men hate nothing so much as superior excellence. When, after a resistance of two months, they found that Marshal MacMahon, with his army 90,000 strong, was too formidable to be any further opposed, they make a last desperate stand behind barricades in the principal streets. When these defenses were no longer tenable, they determined to involve Paris in their own ruin. They set on fire the Palace of the Tuileries, the Palais de Justice, the Hotel de Ville, the Louvre, and other public buildings, the ornament and glory of Paris, masterpieces of architecture, rich in associations of historical fame, and containing treasures of art that could never be replaced. Nothing was sacred in their eyes. Even the Napoleonic column in the Place Vendome, covered with sculptured bas-reliefs of the martial glories of France, they levelled to the ground. All that was refined, monumental, and grand was odious to them; for, like the Goths and Vandals, they warred on civilization. The magnificent range of the Tuileries was burned to the ground, the Louvre narrowly escaping a like fate. The Hotel de Ville, which had cost millions and was one of the finest edifices of Europe, became a mass of smoking ruins.
A little longer and all the sacred edifices would have been given up to the flames, and Paris itself might have ceased to exist. Trains of powder were found laid near petroleum in the sewers to blow up the city and leave it a wreck. Never in the worst times—no, not even in the bloody Revolution of 1789, did such fiends arise to disgrace the human shape they wore, and to dishonor the name of man. These infuriated demons were fought by the French army under the conduct of Thiers, Gambetta, and the Republican leaders as the enemies of France, liberty, and Christian principles. They were the legitimate successors of Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, and the men who during the Reign of Terror covered France with havoc and massacre. Foiled here, their aim is now to repeat the same scenes in Republican America, and on the ruins of your institutions to erect their arbitrary rule, with the guillotine as the instrument of their vengeance. Let the savage barbarities, the incendiarism, and the licentiousness of the Communists of 1789 and 1871 in France warn you, Americans, of the fate reserved for your now happy country should it fall into the hands of the same class of men.—Paris Correspondence of the Phila. Press.
OFFICIAL FLUNDER.
It seems almost superfluous to say that the most alarming symptom of corruption under the form of government with which this country should be blest, in every sense, has been the unblushing venality to be traced in so many official quarters. This is an evil which has increased upon us so rapidly that where a case of conscientious discharge of duty occurs, it positively becomes a matter of especial remark by honest people and of general clamor and outcry by the rogues. Not, indeed, that offices are generally filled by men who commence with thorough-going rascality; but one is used to hearing upon the street such remarks as these: “That place has a regular salary of $3,000 per annum, but he can make $10,000 out of it.” Again, “So-and-so is worth $200,000; but when he took that office, two years ago, at $6,000, he hadn’t a cent.”
Honest, toiling men of industry, talent, frugality, and self-denial, heard these things with amazement and aversion at first, but, finding them continually repeated amid the smiles and not the frowns of the bystanders, who were as likely to be men of note as any others, grew familiar with the thought, and, at last, insensibly lost that keen, delicate sense of rectitude that should have been their second nature. Then came, perhaps, the pressure of sudden calamity and poverty, the taunts, the sneers, the petty contumelies * “that patient merit
Of the unworthy takes,” and, in some sad moment of forgetful despair, even a noble nature may have stumbled and fallen. Something like this may have been the history of many a heart that has been swept into the vortex of an evil time. Others, commencing with ripened knavery, and, finding little restraint either in the public conscience or in the barriers which law imposes, have not been satisfied till they have gorged themselves with immense sums of the people’s money.114We now look with amazement at the mountains of debt—State, municipal, and corporate—piled up within the last decade, large portions of the avails of which were stolen by those who had the handling of the funds. The wonder now is, first, how we could ever have permitted such a state of things to occur; and secondly, how we shall ever become extricated from the load. Doubtless it is easier to answer the first of these questions than the second; but one thing is certain, we shall never get out of the trouble unless we stop its cause. Public and official thieving must cease.—True Citizen, Sept., 1877.
Come, dear Saviour, come in glory;
Take thy wearied servants home:
We would bow in love before thee;
We would greet the loved ones gone.
We have waited long in sorrow;
We have toiled and struggled long;
Speed the bright, the joyful morrow;
Haste the victor’s shout and song.
Earth beneath the curse yet mourneth;
Plagues abound—death, misery:
List, the whole creation groaneth,—
Let it thy salvation see.
Nations all with fear are quaking,
From the dungeon to the throne;
Rise, O God, the heavens shaking;
Take the kingdom for thine own.
Sound the trump of solemn warning;
Let thy shout the saints awake;
Clad in robes of bright adorning,
To thyself thy loved ones take.
Now prepare thy saints to meet thee;
Help us each to do thy will;
Then with joy we soon shall greet thee,
With thee stand on Zion’s hill.
—Sel.
LYING SPIRITS.
By L. Caldwell
The spiritualist camp is in a state of ferment over an event that took place on the Lake Pleasant, Mass., camp-ground, Aug. 19, as reported for the Banner of Light, of Sept. 1. Mr. J. Frank Baxter is described by the Banner as “one of the most remarkable givers of tests now known to the world, and a reliable and worthy man.” His forte is to lecture, and either in the midst of his lecture or at its close to give names, dates, and circumstances, purporting to be connected with some persons who “have passed through the change called death.”
“After the morning exercises, Mr. J. Frank Baxter had described several spirits, and the manner of their death, holding the audience nearly an hour after the dinner bell, all seeming more hungry for spiritual than material food. At the close of Mr. Lynn’s lecture (about 3 P. M.), expectation was again on tiptoe for a continuance of these test descriptions. Mr. Baxter had remarked in the morning that Attica, his Indian control, had told him to be ‘careful.’ He did not know exactly what she meant. One of the trio of singers brought forward a ‘negro spiritual,’ or plantation melody, to be sung at the close of the lecture. Mr. B., who is one of the singers, objected to singing it, as hardly appropriate to the time and place. But he was over-persuaded, and then joined heartily in the song. Immediately on finishing the song, he sprang to his feet and assumed the character of a negro spirit, saying he ‘used to be known as A. Bunter, who used to split planks with his head for a quarter; that he lived in Williamstown, and died in 1875.’ A man in the audience recognized him, and so did another, but the last man declared he was not dead. ‘No,’ said Baxter, ‘I am alive, but alive in the spirit. I died in 1875.’ The man said he knew Bunter well, and had seen him within a week. Conversation with the man satisfied Mr. Baxter that a false statement had been made by the influence controlling him. He could not explain it, and felt it to be a blow to the confidence with which his guidance of spirit friends had inspired him.”
The Springfield Union, of Aug. 21, says: “In February, 1875, Abe Bunter was very sick, and his death was reported in the Williams College paper. As he was a well-known character, the Springfield papers wrote him up, stating his famous exploits at butting, and his willingness at any time to smash a plank with his head for a quarter. But alas for nicely prepared ‘tests!’ the college paper was wrong, and Abe Bunter didn’t die then, and hasn’t died since.”
After the Tuesday lecture Baxter “explained” as follows: “I do not offer any explanation of the matter. Spiritualism is either true or else I am a fraud. This is the first thing that has occurred since I pronounced myself a spiritualist, that has thrown over me the least shade of doubt. I am trying with all my might and main to be true to myself, and to my spirit friends, who, I believe, exist, and, I might say, know exist. The explanation of the thing is demanded from the spirit world; and I hope Attica may take possession of me and clear up the matter, because I want it for myself.”
Baxter then gave five or six “tests.” Then “Attica” took possession of him, and explained the plank-splitter case in her peculiar way, adding “s” to nearly every word, and speaking very rapidly. The explanation was that a party of negro spirits tried to possess Baxter, but Attica objected, lest they should make the medium dance, thinking that beneath his dignity at such a time. After the song, however, Attica allowed one of the spirits who seemed orderly to communicate, and he was told by another of them to give the name of Bunter, which he did. The statement of Abe’s failure to go the trip, was as much a surprise to these spirits as to the audience, one of them affirming that he read an account of Abe’s death before he (the spirit) came to the spirit world. This explanation, Mr. Baxter said, was a very unsatisfactory one to him.
Baxter writes to the Springfield Union: “It is possible that a lying spirit perpetrated the fraud, as in 2 Chron. 18. But for myself I cannot account for the fact. Never have I had one doubt of the spiritual philosophy until that eventful Sunday, when surely I found myself overshadowed with a cloud of doubts.”
The spiritualists of this section are very anxious concerning their philosophy, and its conflict with the word of God. We take courage, and press the work.
L. CALDWELL.
Darlington, Ind.
HAVE WE A MIND TO WORK?
By Chas. B. Reynolds
The record of success, which, under very adverse circumstances, was attained by the Israel of God under the leadership of Nehemiah in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, is replete with interest and encouragement for us to-day, showing, as it does, what may be done by feeble instrumentalities under the very greatest difficulties, if only the people have a mind to work, to patiently continue in well doing, to work in harmony, and under the direction of the Spirit of God.
God is no respecter of persons. The God we love is the same God as of old: he is just as ready and willing to help and bless, and in the hour of extremity to manifest his miraculous power, and give sustaining grace and strength, to-day as in the days of Nehemiah.
Man’s necessity is God’s opportunity. He is an ever-present help in time of need. When we do all we can, then God’s blessing makes our inefficiency a full sufficiency. We have ample evidence of this in our history as a people. Think of the great discouragements under which the work of proclaiming present truth commenced. What a mighty work was to be done—to repair the breach in God’s holy law, to educate the people up to the great and solemn truths of the third angel’s message. Friends so few! Resources so limited! Oh, how seemingly hopeless the task! Think of those brave, noble-hearted pioneers in the work, in their little upper chamber, which was alike office and home. They were destitute of necessaries, and were obliged to exercise all their skill and ingenuity in making each poor article of furniture serve a multiplicity of purposes.
Like the apostles of old, they had, for their Herculean task, only their poverty, their obscurity, their weakness; but blessed be God! like them they had the truth. Like them, too, they had hearts of faith, and zeal, and love to God and their fellow-men,—a faith to believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him, a faith that daily grew by daily exercise, and that has buoyed them up under every trial, perplexity, opposition, and discouragement, to the present hour. They had a mind to work. They used all they had, little though it might be. Trusting in God, they worked through darkest clouds, persecutions, and contumely. Midst hope and fear, in joy or sorrow, they never faltered, never gave up, never stopped. They did all they could all the time. Even in severe sickness they went forth, trusting in Israel’s God. They had a mind to work, and therefore God helped, sustained, blessed them.
They did not give up because as the work grew it made greater, more continual, heavier demands upon them; but as they increased in strength and experience they increased their labors. All the way they have realized their insufficiency, the utter inadequacy of the means at their command with which to perform the work assigned them; but, like the apostles of old who were commanded to feed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes (not actually enough for themselves), they have given their little all to Jesus. He has accepted, blessed it; then they have used it; and as they have used it, it has increased, and proved an abundance.
Well might the enemies of God’s truth say, in the language of those of old, “What do these feeble Jews? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive115the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned? Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.” Neh. 4:2, 3.
Spite of Sanballat and Tobiah, who have harassed and tried to hinder, even to the present hour, how wondrously God has prospered the work in the hands of these faithful ones! Why? Because they have had a mind to work, because they have patiently continued in well doing, because they have loved God, and their eyes have ever been upward, gazing at the proffered reward. To them Jesus has been no ideal imagining, but a reality, a tried, trusted friend, with whom each hour they love to hold sweet converse. They have labored on, bearing the cross through many and many long, sleepless nights of intense anxiety, with wearied frame and sorrow-laden, aching heart, ignoring self, making every demanded sacrifice, leaving home, friends, even their dear children—sacrifices not the less hard to make because made promptly, uncomplainingly. How wondrously God has blessed their labors! and now they can say, See what the Lord hath wrought.
We hope to share with them the “Well done.” Do we believe God is a God of justice? Can the sacred lips of Jesus declare of us, “Well and faithfully done”? Can a just and righteous Saviour bid us welcome, declare us blessed of his Father, bid us share the reward with these faithful, sacrificing laborers in his cause?
Have we, like them, a mind to work for Jesus? or do we evince a mind to work for self? Wherein have we done well? Wherein have we proved faithful? How many stones have we sought for, raised from the rubbish, helped to fit for the Master’s use? God help us to examine our condition, and see just where we stand. The question is not, What are we giving of our abundance? but, What are we sacrificing for the work?
Are we rejoicing that the wall is being so rapidly built? Are we giving grateful praise to God for the glorious progress of the cause? This is well. But what are we doing to help the work? While the faithful leaders lay broad plans, are we among those who cavil, find fault, and murmur because calls are made on our time and means? Do we aggravate the wickedness of withholding by talking discouragement? Do we give a little help, what from our abundance we hardly miss, and that reluctantly, grudgingly, and yet expect to share the reward of the faithful?
If we really believe the third angel’s message, we shall have a mind to work. We shall rejoice at having opportunity to share in the work of repairing the breach. It is true, we cannot all be master workmen, or overseers of the work. We may not have ability to be craftsmen to dress the stones or lay them symmetrically and securely; but we can all be burden bearers: we can help to stay up the hands of the workmen, and encourage them to continued effort. Do we feel our great lack, that at best all we can do will be but very little? Then there is the more need of redoubling our zeal and diligence—of doing all we can all the time.
In rebuilding the wall in the days of Nehemiah, there was no place for drones, dreamers, idlers, doubters. God’s children worked sword in hand; ease, comfort, self were ignored. Their whole hearts were engaged in the one great work of building up the down-trodden wall of Zion. They rejoiced in the broad plans of the leaders, and gladly devoted their all—their time, their means—to carrying on the good work. Have we a mind to work for Jesus? Think what he has done for us.
“I gave my life for thee. My precious blood I shed
That thou might’st ransomed be, and quickened
from the dead.
I gave, I gave my life for thee. What hast thou
given for me?
My Father’s house of light, my glory-circled
throne,
I left for earthly night, for wanderings sad and
lone.
I left, I left it all for thee. Hast thou left aught
for me?”
Among the most blessed treasures of grace is the Sabbath, the seventh day, for a day of rest and refreshment. The toiling millions, with bended back and weary hands, look forward to the Sabbath as a day of rest, of release from toil; a day of relief from care; a day when the rough garments may be laid aside, and the clean and better be used; a day when they need not rise before daylight, but may rest all day; a day when the father may be at home with his family, and the apprentice be at home with his parents and brothers and sisters; a day of cheer, of church, of reading, of rest, and of improvement. We can conceive of the importance of this day to the toiling millions, when we consider that on account of its religious character, it has been for thousands of years respected by all nations and observed by all classes; so that soldiers had rest, and sailors had rest, and servants had rest, and slaves had rest, and the toiling millions, bond and free, had rest. Say not, They could have it without a Sabbath; we know better. Take away the reverence for the day, and capitalists would soon demand seven days' work to the week, and men with starving families would soon offer to work seven days to the week; and more work would be done for less reward, and capitalists would be enriched and working men be made poorer, because the toilers would be robbed of the rest that God gave them. Say not that it would be preserved for recreation: that would soon cease under pinching poverty; and the toiling millions would be oppressed more and more.
In the text we have the origin of the Sabbath, and the nature of it. It had its origin with God in Eden. It comes down to us from the sinless age. It is found first as one of the three paradise laws; viz., marriage, labor, rest. In Eden God gives the Sabbath, and the command and the example of its observance. God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified and hallowed it. Thus you see that it is not a Jewish Sabbath, for it antedates all Jews. But as Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for man,”—made in the beginning for all our race. When Israel was chosen as a church, God gave them the Sabbath enshrined in the decalogue of eternal laws. There were ten commandments set as a cabinet of jewels, a central one of which was the Sabbath. While this proves its preciousness, it by no means proves it Jewish. As well call all the rest Jewish and reject the decalogue—yea, reject Christ, and the apostles, and the Scriptures, for all these are liable to the same charge on the same principles. Appealing to prejudice to please the unprincipled is a sign of subtlety, but not of candor or fairness. And we should be careful how we unchain the lion; for the man whom we teach to-day to despise the fourth commandment may to-morrow despise the sixth to our cost.
DID CHRIST DO IT AWAY?
Jesus did away some laws, such as were peculiar to the Hebrew nation—laws pertaining to their state and kingdom, laws of the priesthood and temporal penalties; but he did not do away with the ten commandments, nor the laws of labor, and Sabbath, and marriage. Jesus said, I came not to do away the law. And St. Paul said, Do we make void the law? By no means. Yea; we establish the law. It was the custom of Christ to keep the Sabbath. Luke 4:16. Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man.” Jesus said that he (Christ) is the “Lord of the Sabbath day.”
If, therefore, we oppose the Sabbath, we oppose the Lord of the Sabbath; if we neglect the Sabbath, we neglect the custom of Christ; if we do away the Sabbath, we do away God's gift to man: but if we observe the Sabbath, we do as Jesus did, as God commands, and as the good of men requires; if we favor it, we build up righteousness; if we oppose it, we minister to sin; if we desecrate it, we desecrate what God has sanctioned, and if we do it away, we rob the race of one of the best blessings of Heaven. The words of Jesus concerning doing good on the Sabbath day, simply meant that we should keep it in its true intent, as he taught them by appealing to the example of the priest and of David; that is, he proved to them that he was introducing no new view of the Sabbath, and that he was so far from being its destroyer, that he proclaimed himself its Lord and guardian.
THE DISCIPLES.
The disciples followed the Master's “custom,” and the women (Luke 23:56) would not proceed to anoint the body of Jesus, but “rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment.”
MANNER OF ST. PAUL.
As it was Jesus' custom to observe the Sabbath, so it was St. Paul's “manner” (Acts 17:2); for it is recorded that as his manner was, he preached to them every Sabbath day. This he did at Philippi, at Thessalonica, at Corinth, at Berea, at Athens, and wherever he preached. While no other day is named except a few times, we can find proof in the New Testament that the apostles preached on more than one hundred Sabbath days.
MEANING OF SABBATH.
The true meaning of the Sabbath is a day sanctified to rest and hallowed happiness,—a type of Heaven. See the fourth chapter of Hebrews. On this day there is relief from toil, as in Heaven; a resurrection from defilement, and a purification, and dressing in better garments, as in Heaven; a day with family, of meeting friends, of rest and refreshment, of cultivation of the mind and worship of God, as in Heaven. Every seventh day God gives the weary a foretaste of the rest of Heaven. The weary limbs recline, the bent back rises, the care-furrowed countenance relapses to smiles, the weary fingers straighten, the father is at home, millions upon millions rest, millions upon millions worship. The earth is at peace; the songs of Heaven are heard, and all this blessing returns every seventh day. Beware how you rob the poor man of his Sabbath.
OBJECTION.
Paul makes no difference in days. Paul was speaking not of the weekly Sabbath, but of other days, such as are now called holy days. See the common rest-days, or sabbaths, of the Jewish religion. Men should not quote these words of Paul and apply them to our Sabbath, while they yet claim to retain some little respect for the day; that is, while they practically deny that “every day is alike.”—Rev. N. Summerbell, in Cincinnati Commercial.
PROFANITY
We are emphatically in the age of profanity, and it seems to us that we are on the topmost current. One cannot go on the street anywhere without having his ears offended with the vilest words, and his reverence shocked by the most profane use of sacred names. Nor does it come from the old or middle-aged alone, for it is a fact that the younger portion of the community are most proficient in degrading language. Boys have an idea that it is smart to swear; that it makes them manly, but there never was a greater mistake in the world. Men, even those who swear themselves, are disgusted with profanity in a young man, because they know how, of all bad habits this clings the most closely and increases with years. It is the most insidious of habits, growing on one so invisibly, that almost before one is aware he becomes an accomplished curser.—Sel.
A SAD REPORT.
The plain, unvarnished tale supplied by our special correspondent now among the Pennsylvania miners, cannot be read with indifference by any just or humane man. We speak of “hard times” when it becomes necessary to forego some luxury, to deny ourselves some familiar pleasure, and to reduce our general standard of expenditure. We complain when pinched to keep up appearances, and repine at the hardship which invades our comfort. In and around the coal fields of an adjoining State, however, are tens of thousands of working men, who, with their families, are on the verge of starvation. A large proportion are unemployed; those that have work are paid so scantily that what they earn barely keeps soul and body together. The picture of squalor and wretchedness, of hunger and nakedness, is shocking enough to touch the hardest heart. It is made more painful by the fact that some of the companies add to the miseries of their people by the enforcement of the truck system. There may be reasons for suspending work in some cases, and for reducing wages in others, but the greed which prompts employers of labor to squeeze out of it the beggarly pittance through the agency of store-pay, admits of no excuse. It is an infamy which the law in other countries has suppressed.—New York Times.