BROTHER W. C. WHITE gives the following interesting account of his visit to the Chicago Mission, on his journey East. It is highly suggestive to workers in all fields, and we are pleased to publish it for their benefit. And we are happy to report that the San Francisco Mission has been turned into a training school as much of this present season as a worker could be spared from other duties to lead it. It is hoped that in the future much more may be done in this respect. We have a deep interest in the Chicago Mission; our visit there impressed us with the importance of the field, and the efficiency of the work being done there. Illinois ought to rejoice in the responsibility and privilege of having such a mission:—
"I stopped one day to visit our friends at the Chicago City Mission. I found them very pleasantly located at 3652 Vincennes Avenue. They have found, as we have, that it is not necessary to be near the center of a large city, as but few meetings are held at the mission rooms. We found Brother and Sister Starr, and the ten young people who are studying, and working with them, all of good courage about their work. Their principal work is to arouse and cultivate an interest in the study of the Bible, especially the prophecies and those Scriptures that point out the signs of Christ's coming and that relate to our present duty.
"As soon as the nature of their work is understood, they are heartily welcomed into the houses of the rich and the poor, the church members, and the discouraged and skeptical. And frequently after spending an evening in reading selected passages of Scripture, in which one passage explains another, until some Bible doctrine which has before seemed difficult and hard to be understood, is made clear and plain, such remarks are made, as, 'That is just what I wanted to know. I believe the Lord sent you here;' and, 'I have enjoyed this very much. When can we have another reading.'
"At the time of my visit, the young people at the mission were nearly all beginners, several of the more experienced ones having been sent away in companies of two and three, to work in other cities. These beginners fit themselves for the work by a thorough course of study, and by accompanying those of more experience and assisting them in their readings.
"The results of this kind of work cannot be easily estimated, but the workers have been encouraged by seeing more than twenty decide to keep all of the commandments. Some facts learned from the workers, made quite an impression on my mind. As soon as the workers have learned how to conduct the readings, and how to introduce themselves and explain the object of their visit, they have no trouble in arranging for as many readings as they are able to hold; those accustomed to the work averaging three or four a day. Ladies meet a more hearty welcome, and are quite as successful in maintaining an interest, as gentlemen. Here is a vast field of labor open to young women. There are, no doubt, a score or more in each of our Conferences who would gladly devote themselves to this work if an opportunity was offered and a competent teacher provided. I hope the San Francisco City Mission will be made a training school for this work."
Labor in California.
By J. G. Smith, R. S. Owen
SANTA MARIA AND GUADALUPE.—Commenced meetings in the tent at Santa Maria, May 12. A strong opposition was brought to bear against the truth from the first. Elder McCorkle of the Disciple Church, and Elder McConn of the South Methodists, united their efforts in trying to show that the ten commandments are an abolished law. In so doing, the same day they "were made friends together; for before they were at enmity between themselves." The Lord gave us freedom of thought and readiness of expression in contrasting papal error with Bible truth.
A Santa Maria correspondent of the Lompoc Record says, in that paper of June 27:—
"The universal verdict of those who do not belong to any church, as far as I have heard, is in favor of the Adventists. They have kept perfectly cool and have treated their opposers with the greatest of courtesy, and have won universal encomiums."
Thirteen signed the covenant, and we organized a Sabbath-school there of twenty six members.
Twelve have signed the covenant at Guadalupe, and a few others are keeping the Sabbath. A Sabbath-school is organized at this place with thirty members.
We hope to see all that have taken a stand, thoroughly converted to God, and having a realizing sense of the importance of the message that has called them from darkness into light. J. G. SMITH,
Guadalupe, Cal. R. S. OWEN.
Preliminaries to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's.
KING FRANCIS, the chivalric, died of his own excesses; his son, Henry II., succeeded the husband of Catherine de' Medici. He was even more vicious and cruel than his father; he persecuted with Italian severity; he died amidst the thanksgivings of the Huguenots, pierced by the lance of a rival knight, at a magnificent tourney. His death made way for the rule of his widow, Catherine de' Medici, and their three miserable sons. Nor can one reflect without a shudder of disgust upon that wretched group of depraved men and more monstrous women into whose hands now fell the destiny of the Huguenots and of fair and progressive France.
Touched by the genial impulse of reform, filled with a brilliant generation of poets, scholars, accomplished artisans, and gifted statesmen, such as the world has seldom known, the unhappy realm was checked in the moment of its advance by the follies and the crimes of Catherine, the popes, and the Guises. Rome ruled at Paris, and in the peaceful and holy communities described by Palissy and Beza was soon aroused a dreadful discord that ended in their destruction. The workman fled from his forge or his loom to die upon the battle-field; the scholar, the musician, and the poet, carried the fruits of their genius to foreign lands; the Italian prelate, with malevolent touch, blighted the dawning civilization of France.
Catherine de' Medici led the revelries, the fashions, and the politics of the age. Her youth had been singularly unfortunate. No friendly voice, no fond or tender counsels, had awakened in her cold heart a trace of filial or maternal love. Her father, Lorenzo de' Medici, had deserved by his vices the miseries he endured; her mother was no less unhappy; and Catherine, the descendant of the wealthiest mercantile house in Europe, was born penniless and a child of evil omen. It was foretold of her at her birth that she would bring destruction to the city where she was born; the towns-people of Florence would have exposed the infant in a basket to the balls of their enemies. But she was preserved alive, was shut up in a convent, and in the school of Macchiavelli and of Rome learned dissimulation and self-control. Her uncle became pope; and Francis I., anxious to win the support of Clement, married his son Henry to the portionless orphan, then a girl of fourteen. But misfortune still followed the child of evil omen. The pope, her uncle, soon died; Francis reaped no benefit from the hasty marriage; and Catherine came into the family of Valois only to be neglected by her husband for Diana of Poitiers, and to be contemned by her regal relatives as the impoverished descendant of a race of merchants.
For many years she lived powerless and obscure, the nominal wife of a depraved king. Yet she was singularly beautiful. Her brilliant complexion, her large and lustrous eyes, the inheritance of the Medicean family, her graceful form, her hand and arm that no painter or sculptor could imitate, were set off by manners so soft and engaging as to win the esteem even of her foes. Few left her presence without being charmed by that graceful courtesy which had descended to her from Lorenzo the Magnificent; few could believe that her placid countenance concealed the passions, the resentments, the unsparing malice of the most ambitious of women. From Lorenzo Catherine had inherited, too, a love for exterior beauty in dress or form, a taste for lavish elegance. She shone at tourneys, and glittered in stately processions. From him, perhaps, came that passion for political intrigue that seemed the only vigorous impulse of her placid nature, and for which at times she became a murderess, reveling in the spectacle of her bleeding victims, or meditated and prepared the corruption, the degradation, or the death of her own sons.
By some ardent Roman Catholic writers Catherine is adorned with all saintly virtues as the guardian and defender of the church; by most historians she is looked upon as an incomprehensible mystery. Not even her contemporaries could penetrate that chill and icy heart, where no maternal or friendly affections ever dwelt, where pity and compassion never came, which was dead to the sufferings of others, and even to her own, and discover the secret springs that guided her erratic policy of vacillation and crime. Yet it is possible that the true mystery lay in her boundless superstition. For the common modes of belief she had nothing but skepticism. She toyed with the Huguenots; she was not afraid to cajole or defy the Catholics and the pope. But before the sorcerer or the fortune-teller all her narrow intellect was bowed in abject submission.
Her credulity was, perhaps, the cause of her impassive cruelty. She obeyed implicitly the decrees of the stars; she consulted with awe the famous seer of Salon, Nostradamus, whose name and writings are still cherished by the lovers of curious mysteries, and whose rude oracles were freely purchased by the noble and the great of his superstitious age. She wore a mystic amulet or chain that still exists; she kept around her astrologers and alchemists, and possibly believed that in all her cruelties and crimes she was governed by an overruling fate. It is probable that a secret insanity clouded the active mind of the French Medea. Yet at the age of thirty-nine Catherine held in her unsteady hand the destiny of France.
By her side had grown up into rare beauty and equal dissimulation and pride a woman scarcely less mysterious than herself. The character of Mary Queen of Scots is still the subject of animated debate. She was the wife of Francis II., Catherine's eldest son, now king of France. He was a feeble, mindless boy of sixteen; but the acute and brilliant Mary was a year or two older, full of graces and accomplishments, of ambition and pride. In the splendid dawn of her mournful career Mary was rightful queen of France and Scotland, and the popish claimant of the crown of England. She seemed the most powerful and prosperous of living women, and, in the petulance of youthful pride, was accustomed to taunt her mother-in-law, Catherine, whom she hated, with being the daughter of a race of Florentine shop-keepers. The two acute and heartless women struggled for power; but the contest was soon ended by the death of Francis and the reluctant retreat of Mary from the palaces and revels of Catholic France to the barren wilds of her Northern kingdom.
At the head of the violent faction of the Catholics stood the ambitious family of the Guises. The feeble kings, and even the aspiring Catherine, were forced to submit to the impetuous and overbearing policy of these devoted adherents of the papacy. It was the favorite aim of the Guises to exterminate the Huguenots, and to lay at the feet of the Roman pontiff, France, purified by a general massacre of his foes. Yet the power of the Guises was only of recent origin. Their father, Duke Claude, had come up to the French court an impoverished adventurer, and had died leaving enormous wealth, the fruit of a corrupt but successful career. His family of six sons were the inheritors of his fortune and power. His daughter was the mother of Mary of Scotland. His eldest son, Duke Francis, ruled over the family, the court, and the king; the second, Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, had engrossed innumerable benefices, and was almost the pope of France; his rare eloquence and vigorous intellect were employed with fatal effect in the cause of persecution; his sonorous voice had chanted at the Council of Trent a perpetual anathema against heresy.
The two Guises, Duke Francis and the cardinal, were called by their contemporaries "the butchers." Nothing stirred their savage breasts with such real joy as the spectacle of Huguenots dying by torture. It was the custom of the cardinal, after a stately dinner at his regal palace, to show his guests a fair array of martyrs executed for their entertainment, or sometimes to hang up a tall and stalwart reformer in the banqueting chamber itself. Such monsters as the Guises, Catherine, or her children, have never been produced in any form of Christianity except the Roman Catholic, and are the necessary result of the Romish doctrine of force.
As if in happy contrast to Catherine and Mary, two women of singular piety and decorum ruled over the chiefs of the Huguenots. Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, and mother of Henry IV., governed her little kingdom with masculine vigor, expelled the priests and the mass, corresponded with Calvin, and scoffed at the malice of the pope. To Jeanne the Huguenots owed their best counsels and their final success; for she educated her son in the valleys of the Pyrenees to bear toil and hunger, to feed on the coarsest food, to play barefoot and bareheaded with the children of the villages, and to prepare himself by early deprivations for the duties of camp and court. Henry descended from his native mountains robust, tall, strong in mind and will, tender-hearted, and benevolent, the direct opposite of the three malicious and degraded kings, his predecessors, who had been moulded by the corrupting hand of their mother, Catherine de' Medici.
Another pure and courageous woman, Charlotte de Laval, wife of the great Coligny, inspired the most eminent of the Huguenots with her own heroic zeal. She urged, she implored her husband to take up arms in defense of reform; and when Coligny pointed out to her, with wise and tender words, the dangers and sufferings that must fall upon them both if he yielded to her advice, she nobly promised to bear all without a murmur. The Huguenot mothers, in fact, in this hour of danger, seemed to emulate the heroism of Jeanne d'Albret and the wife of Coligny, and bid their husbands and their sons go forth to battle, followed by their blessings and their prayers.556
Yet the Huguenots were fearfully outnumbered. They formed scarcely a twentieth part of the population of France. Paris, the chief city of the realm, was intensely Catholic. The court and the Guises held in their power the capital and the government of the nation. Calvin and the Protestant pastors urged submission upon the persecuted Huguenots, and it was with sincere reluctance that Coligny and the chiefs of his party raised at last the standard of a religious warfare. A terrible atrocity suddenly aroused them to action. On Sunday, March 1, 1562, the bells rang for service in the little town of Vassy, in Champagne, and a congregation of twelve hundred Huguenots had gathered in a large barn to celebrate their simple worship. Duke Francis of Guise rode into the village at the head of a party of soldiers, on his way to Paris. The peal of the Huguenot bells enraged the fanatical chief, and after dinner he led out his soldiers to disturb or destroy the peaceful worshipers. They broke into the barn; the Huguenots, unarmed, threw stones at the intruders, and one struck the duke on the cheek. He gave orders for a general massacre of the Protestants; men, women, and children were cut down or shot by the merciless assassins; few escaped unharmed from the dreadful scene; the duke, covered with the blood of innocence, rode on in triumph to Paris. He was received in the most Catholic city as the avenger of the church. Surrounded by a body-guard of twelve hundred gentlemen on horseback, he entered the city by the St. Denis gate amidst the applause of a vast throng of citizens; the streets rang with songs and ballads composed in his honor. He was from this time the consecrated leader of the papal party; and the priests and bishops from every pulpit celebrated that "noble lord" who had instigated and guided the massacre of the heretics at Vassy. A year later the duke lay on his dying-bed, his ambition stilled forever, his furious rage quenched in the last agonies; and in the varying accounts of his dying hours it is at least certain that there rose up before him the picture of the pious congregation he had so ruthlessly destroyed—a memory of the wickedest of all his evil deeds.—Historical Studies.
Where Are They?
By Rose Terry Cooke
MIS' BABCOCK and me got a-talking one afternoon, after Deacon Coit's funeral, about forrin missions. We'd sort of stood around after the buryin' had took place, a-looking at the stones of them we knew, and fin'lly we set down on a bench there was in Judge Prior's lot, that folks said he put up there when he went to his wife's grave, as he used to some when she fust died. But he's had three on 'em sense, and one is livin' still, so he don't set there so much now; 'twould be sort of confusing ef he did, I expect. But, as I was sayin', we set down, and fell to talkin' about our neighbors, as folks will, and she said, "Mis' Green, I've always had it on my mind ag'inst Judge Prior that he don't give as he'd ought to for forrin missions."
"Well," says I, "perhaps that isn't his choice to give to; he's real liberal to the minister and to poor folks, and he's free-handed to home; his wife and children don't want for a thing that's wholesome and necessary, which is what couldn't be said of Deacon Coit. I ain't to blame the deacon, neither, but I always did think he give away more than he had ought to, considering his wife is real delicate, and Sophronny nigh to death with the consumption."
"But think of them poor heathens, Mis' Green, that haven't no privileges sech as we have. And how shall they hear, as Scripter says, unless they have preachers?"
"That's so," says I, "and I haven't never denied it; only I do say that everybody can't favor the same thing. Some folks is interested in one thing, an' some in another, and I feel more for what I see than for what I don't see. I'd sights ruther give what little I have to give, to help them poor folks up on Tanner's Hill, and them destitoot charcoal burners over in Holly Woods, than send it out to Indy or Polynesy, or forrin parts anywhere; and you'd ruther do the other way; somebody's got to do one, and somebody t'other."
"I don't b'lieve you're properly impressed with the state of the heathen," says Mis' Babcock, in a high and mighty sort of a way, heavin' a big sigh, as though I was an awful cretur, and to be pitied.
"Mebbe I ain't," says I, kind of short, and she didn't say no more; but I knew she kep' a-thinkin' of it. There are considerable many folks in this world who want that everybody else should see with their eyes, and them that don't they think is willfully blind, and Mis' Babcock is one of that sort; what she don't think a'n't worth thinkin', in her view; but she's honest about it, and strives serious to do what's about right herself. But I can't talk to her, and she knows it. I'd jest as lieves talk to our barn door; it's wasted breath.
I knowed well what it meant, howsover, when she asked me there to spend the afternoon and drink tea two weeks after, and I found she'd got a missionary from Indy a-visitin' of her with his wife. They'd got children in this country to school, and they'd come over to rest a little, for he was tired out and feeble, so feeble that he didn't come out of the bedroom till tea time; but she was a slim, cherk, capable body; and, when Mis' Babcock went out to get the tea and make some of her quick biscuit and a strawberry short-cake, she left me and Mis' Tyler on the piazzy together, and Mis' Tyler began it. She looked around outdoors, with a kind of a sigh, and said, "Oh, Mrs. Green, you don't know what your privileges are, to live in a Christian land."
"I wish 'twas Christian," says I.
"Why, what do you mean?" says she. "Haven't you got the light of the gospel, and the blessing of Christian civilization?"
"Land, yes," says I, "but, don't you know, Mis' Tyler, there are folks who won't see because they shut their eyes? And what good does the light do to sech? And how does Christianity help or civilize them that won't practice it?"
"Oh, my friend!" says she, "if once you lived among the heathen, as I do, you would appreciate your blessings; think of living among liars and thieves, who know nothing of the sacredness of truth, or the rights of property."
"I live amongst 'em now," says I, "there ain't no worse liars in Chiny, Indy, nor the Cannibal Islands, than there be right here in Dallas. I dunno more'n five people in the township that would tell the truth if they thought 'twas goin' to hurt 'em, or lose 'em ten cents; and as for stealin', we can't leave our washin' on the lines any night in the year, nor keep our apples, nor our pears, nor our grapes, no, not even the blows in our gardins, from the folks that can help themselves to 'em nights, or days either, if you a'n't lookin'."
"Dear me!" said she, looking real distressed. "Can this be so? But there is the dreadful vice and immorality of the heathen, which is certainly one thing you do not have to contend with."
"I dunno as we contend with it much, Mis' Tyler, but there's lots of it; in our very schools I don't believe you'll get ten clean-minded and pure actin' boys—no, nor girls neither—out of every fifty." And then I went on to tell her about the actions of some I knowed of, and the books they got to read, private; and how that the Young Men's Christian S'ciety in York tracked an' hunted that book matter out, and found how many in every school had read 'em or had 'em.
She turned kind of pale. "Is it really so?" she asked, in a low voice.
"I'm afeared 'tis, judgin' by what takes place here." And then I told her what I knew positive about some of the children amongst us, even the minister's son, too.
"And now," says I, "do you think Christianity has got through needin' to work to home here?"
"Oh, no! no! indeed no; but how you must work here; even harder than we have to!"
"No, we don't," says I, "we don't have no missionaries here to speak of."
She looked at me sort of curious, and drew a long breath. "Well," she said, "the children here have parents who can labor with them, not four or five mothers under one roof to be always jealous of each other's boys."
"No," says I, "not quite that; but I do'no but we're as bad other ways. Folks here get lawfully married, but when they're tired of each other, or get mad, or take to drink, they can get unmarried about as easy. There was Sereny Marsh over to Squam; she had three livin' husbands when she died. And Mark Stone's first wife is Mis' Joe Wheeler now, and he's just gettin' a bill from his second. And that's only two of 'em; there's lots more. Folks like that don't have much to say to the children."
"Oh, dear!" said Mis' Tyler; and, like the man in Pilgrim's Progress, the water stood in her eyes. "It does seem as if you needed help and hands here almost as much as we do; but your hope must be in teaching and converting the children."
"Well, now, look here," says I; "here's a family of folks not forty rod off from where you an' me are settin', born Yankees; the oldest girl only just sixteen livin' an openly shameful life, the mother settin' her an example in the same. The second girl was took to court the other day, complainant in a criminal assault case. She told the hull story right out without hesitatin' a mite, and giv' particulars; but when they come to swear her in she didn't know there was such a bein' as God. The father is a shif'less drunkard, too glad to have his women folks earn their own livin' any way. Now there won't one of them hark to a word you say. Try to visit 'em an' they'll shut an' bolt the door; try to speak to 'em and they larf in your face, and whatever you give 'em you don't get a thankee. They'd rather sin than not. Ain't that pretty solid heathenism?"
"It is awful! awful!" she said, kind of solemn.
I was half a mind to be sorry I'd be'n and told her all this, but well I knew that Mis' Babcock had set her to talk to me, an' quite probable had told her how that I didn't take no in'crest in forrin missions; and I meant for to show her that th' was heathen next door that in'crested me more than them that was over sea.
She sort of thought a minnit, and says, "Well, at any rate, your people don't kill their children. You do not see the shores of your rivers drown with dead babies, or their tiny bodies floating on the dark waters, to be the prey of evil birds and leaping reptiles."
"No," says I, "we kill 'em too young for that."
"What do you mean?" says she, turnin' on me a horrified look; and I went on to explain what I did mean, and told her facts. She really shuddered. "Can these things be so in a Christian country," she said, "even among its most ignorant and degraded classes?"
"But it isn't them alone;" I said. "Mis' Tyler, this abominable thing is done amongst them that are educated an' enlightened and well-to-do; yea, verily, amongst them who have taken upon them the name of Christ—in this very town, in this very church to which Sister Babcock and I both belong, this murder has been committed, boasted of, exulted in, right out."
"And is there no way of punishment, no law to reach such fearful abuses?"
"Yes, there's a law; 'tis a State's prison offense; but come to such folks as I'm telling of nobody did nor will prosecute 'em; they're too 'respectable'—that means money. Even the church never took any notice of it. They wasn't so much as reprimanded; for the same reason, I expect. But over and over and over again I have heard poor folks say, 'If't had been me done sech as that, I'd ha' had court and meetin' both turned onto me, and ketched it from 'em both.' And, Mis' Tyler, I don't know but what it's so."
"O Lord, how long!" she said, with a look on her face as though she was prayin'.
"And now," says I, "Mis' Tyler, you know, and I know, that Sister Babcock faults me considerable because I don't give no more money to, nor take no more in'crest in, forrin missions. Well, we ain't all made alike, and I'm one that sees and feels the things under my nose a sight more than them that is fur off. I'm a kind of557a near-sighted Christian, I guess, but the Lord's got to hev some of us stay to home, ye know, and do the housework, so to speak; and I've always looked towardst the text that speaks about providin' for your own fam'ly; but I do feel just as pitiful over these heathens here as you do over them where you be, and it seems as though I must do what little I can for my neighbors before I go further. There's hundreds an' thousands of folks, too, that give to your s'ciety and go to its meetin's, and talk about it, and pray for it, to where there's five that even think about this state of things to home. And if it ain't tended up to, why to my mind it'll be just like Squire Root's spring, that bein' left open and hevin' all sorts of refuse put into't, and nobody cleaning of it out, fin'lly run into the well on the green and p'isoned half the town. I feel as though our great beautiful country had got a rot to its core, and it must be some way or other got out or we're all ruined; and ther' won't nothing but a livin', actin' gospel do it."
"But, dear Mrs. Green, I can't, I don't, understand all this. I respect your feeling and see just where you stand, and hold out my hand to you as a true fellow-laborer in the vineyard; but when I think of all this sin and vice and corruption going on unchecked in your lovely villages, with your churches, your laws, your privileges, I must ask, Where are your church-members? Where are your professed Christians, that this state of things can exist in their very neighborhood?"
I couldn't say nothing.
Sure enough, WHERE ARE THEY?—Rose Terry Cooke, in the Congregationalist.
The Home Circle.
By M. B. Gleason
GOD KNOWETH BEST.
Oft we murmur at God's doings
And would make our wants the guide,
Though assured he knoweth all things,
Knoweth what may best betide.
He who orders all, omniscient,
Knoweth ev'ry human breast,
And he sendeth the most needful,
For he knoweth what is best.
Nature in her native anthem,
When the day wakes her from rest,
Chants in glad refrain, God knoweth,
Ever knoweth what is best.
And at noontide, robed in splendor,
Wears from vale to mountain crest
Tokens that proclaim, God knoweth,
Ever knoweth what is best.
So in grateful vesper-worship,
When the sun sinks in the west,
Gives her grand response, God knoweth,
Ever knoweth what is best.
Over all this vast creation,
In its varied beauties dressed,
Unseen fingers write, God knoweth,
Ever knoweth what is best.
—M. B. Gleason.
Smoking and Chewing.
By Editor
"If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." John 8:36. "And the truth shall make you free." John 8:32.
ARE tobacco smokers and chewers free? Alas, there are but very few forms of bondage so galling as that of the tobacco consumer. How many of them often make the sad confession, "I would give up the habit if I could." Is this gospel freedom? Is this liberty from enslaving habits? Verily not. An old man, who had borne an irreproachable character up to the age of seventy-two, was lately brought before one of the tribunals of Paris for stealing a piece of lead worth eight cents. He admitted that he was wholly without means, and for the first time in his life knew not where to find a single sous; but it was not hunger that drove him to steal. After considerable questioning on the part of the judge as to what could be stronger than hunger, he confessed it was tobacco for his pipe. "Tobacco, monsieur judge!" said he growing violent. "I have the misery to be a hopeless smoker! I smoke at waking; I smoke while eating; I cannot sleep without smoking till the pipe falls from my mouth. Tobacco costs me six cents a day. When I have none I am frantic. I cannot work, nor sleep, nor eat. I go from place to place raging like a mad dog. The day I stole the lead, I had been without tobacco twelve hours! I searched the day through for an acquaintance of whom I could beg a pipeful. I could not, and resorted to crime as a less evil than I was enduring. The need was stronger than I!"
So fearfully enslaving is the habit that its victims when deprived of the weed for a while, will do almost anything to get a quid, or pipeful of tobacco. A brute in human form, named William Biddlescombe, was convicted by a magistrate at Portsmouth, England, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment for skinning a living small terrier dog, and his only assigned reason for his cruelty was that he wanted the skin for a tobacco pouch!!!
"The Danes," writes the Brussels correspondent of the Irish Times, "are passionately fond of smoking. The punishment of death cannot be inflicted upon Danish criminals unless they confess their crimes; and the withholding of tobacco is said to frequently lead to an acknowledgment of guilt; and, indeed, on some occasions to this confession when the accused are really innocent, because the beloved weed is then no longer denied them. We have heard," continues the writer, "of men dying for their country, for their creed, for their love, but it is strange to hear of martyrs to a deleterious plant."
Said a young man, "I believe my pipe does me harm; I feel it is injuring me; but were I certain that it would curtail my life by fifteen years, I could not give it up"!! How distressing to hear such a statement from a free-born son of Britain! "I am a slave to tobacco," says a lawyer, "and I will give a hundred dollars to be told how to get rid of it without killing me"! "I have resolved a thousand times to be free," says another, "but I am still a slave, a hopeless slave"! A deacon on his death-bed, made the following painful statement: "I thank God, that as my last sickness has now come, I shall get rid of my hankerings for tobacco!" The Rev. George Trask writes: "I have known men to dream and rage about tobacco as madmen, when deprived of it. I have known men so enslaved, that use it they would in parlors, in churches, in temperance meetings, in defiance of all remonstrance, in defiance of all decency. And one lodge of the Sons of Temperance (?) as I certainly know, passed a resolution that they would not lay aside their tobacco even during the hour they were convened for temperance purposes. I have known a temperance lecturer of great distinction positively refuse to lecture until he had been furnished with a pipe of tobacco to screw his nerves up to the point of eloquence. I know an excellent clergyman who assured me that he had sometimes wept like a child when putting a quid of tobacco in his mouth, under a sense of his degradation and bondage to this filthy habit. I saw a man who told me that tobacco was the dearest thing he had on earth—dearer than wife, child, Church, or State!"
"I can name a clergyman who was much enslaved to his snuff; he sometimes reproved a neighbor who was a drunkard. At length the drunkard said to him, 'If you will give up your snuff, I will give up my rum.' The bargain was made. But within forty-eight hours the clergyman was in perfect anguish for his snuff. He set a spy over the drunkard to watch for his downfall. When told that the fatal cup had passed his lips, he flew to his snuff-box with the fury of a maniac, made himself idiotic, and died a fool! Tell us which was the greater drunkard? Or, as sin is the point in debate, which was the greatest sinner? Dear sir, we said to a brother clergyman, do, I pray you, give up tobacco. 'Not I, not I,' was his reply, 'I will use it if it shortens my life seven years. I will live while I live.' If this is not slavery, what is slavery? Is it not a sin to practice a habit which makes an abject slave? An eminent minister, once said, 'I would lay down one hundred pounds gladly at any time if I could give up smoking!' A woman in Essex County, a Christian professor, called for her snuff-box in her dying agonies, on the verge of eternity! weeping friends witnessed her passion strong in death! Her last words were 'nuff, nuff, give me nuff!''"
"To all who are enslaved by this habit and say they would give up their weed if they could, let me give the following remarks from the author of 'Confessions of an Old Smoker:' Besides, brethren, permit a word of friendly expostulation on this unmanly, puerile state of mind which contents itself with wishing that you could (!) abandon the use of tobacco! Proh pudor! What a confession of mental and moral weakness. You wish to give up the practice, but you cannot; of course you know the distinction between natural and moral inability; but if you have forgotten it, I must refer you to your old friend and my old friend, John Howard Hinton, for a full and satisfactory explanation of the difference between a depraved disposition and a want of power. That veteran polemic will tell you that your disposition is wrong; and that you have all the power necessary to enable you to do the deed. The fact is, you do not want to give up tobacco; you like it too well to make the sacrifice. You could do it this moment if you would, but your will is wrong, and, therefore, the sacrifice is not made; you are in bondage to a habit, a mere habit, and you have not the resolution to break the chains, and assert your freedom. This is the plain truth, and you know it. Do not then attempt to impose upon yourselves by inaccuracies of speech. Your 'I cannot' means 'I will not.'"—Rev. A. Sims.
WHAT business is that which is diametrically opposed to every clergyman, the standing dread of every mother, the constant fear of every father, the horror of every wife, which makes ninety per cent of the business of criminal courts, ninety per cent of the pauperism for which the tax-payers have to pay, which keeps employed an army of policemen in all our cities, which puts out the fire on every hearth, and condemns wives and children to rags, cold and hunger, which fosters vice for profit, and educates in wickedness for gain? The saloon business!—Lever.
Legal Phraseology.
By Christian Union
If a man would, according to law, give to another an orange, instead of saying, "I give you that orange"—which one would think would be what is called in legal phraseology "an absolute conveyance of all right and title therein"—the phrase would run thus: "I give you all and singular my estate and interest, right, title, and claim, and advantage of and in that orange, with all its rind, skin, juice, pulp, and pips, and all right and advantage therein, with full power to bite, cut, suck, and otherwise eat the same, or give the same away, as fully and effectually as I, said A. B., am now entitled to bite, cut, suck, or otherwise eat the same orange, or give the same away, with or without its rind, juice, pulp, and pips, anything heretofore or hereafter, or in another deed or deeds, instrument or instruments, of what nature or kind soever, to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding."—Christian Union.
Fast Traveling
NEARLY every one is fond of fast traveling. In fact it would seem that most of us are born with a desire to get over the ground as fast as men can devise means with which to carry us. So it happens that the railroad companies are continually trying to increase the speed of their through trains, and thus to lessen the time it takes to go from point to point. Some time ago a fast train was put on between New York and Chicago which makes the run of nearly a thousand miles in twenty-four hours. Of course the passengers have to eat and sleep while going forty and sometimes sixty miles an hour. An old stage driver said, with kindling eye, the other day, that he used to drive a coach and four from Springfield to Boston, 100 miles, in one day. Our grandfathers called that fast traveling.—Sel.
Cultivated by Affliction
By Bishop Hall
The best ground untilled soonest runs out rank weeds. Such are God's children, overgrown with security ere they are aware unless they be well cultivated, both with God's plow of affliction and their own industry of meditation.