p. 364 | Review and Herald, Vol. 31, No. 23. (5/26/1868)

To the Friends of the Health Reform.

By John Nevins Andrews; James White; D. T. Bourdeau

We introduce to your notice our brother, M. G. Kellogg, M. D., recently from the Hygieo Therapeutic College, New York City, R. T. Trall, M. D., President. Bro. Kellogg takes the field as a lecturer on the science of human life. He will examine the sick, and give prescriptions. He is ready to receive calls from those who wish his labors.

We recommend him as a man who fears God, and one devoted to the cause of present truth and reform. We regard him as an instructive and interesting lecturer, and one qualified to advise the sick. All our churches should secure his labors.

It will be expected that in each place where he labors, the friends of health reform will contribute to his support, and the payment of his traveling expenses. Examination and prescription, $2.00. When called to a distance, his traveling expenses should be paid, also a reasonable compensation for his time and labor in treating the sick.

Let it be distinctly understood that Bro. Kellogg goes out in this work under the direction of the General Conference Committee. He engages in this work to do good, not for the pay; but he is a poor man, and if he devotes himself to doing good to others, he deserves a support. The Committee will see that this support be given. If it is not received in the form of donations and examination fees, &c., from those who have his services, it will be paid out of the Gen. Conf. funds. And let none fear that they will pay him too much. He will report to the Committee, and should there be more received than to pay him as our ministers are paid, it will be put into the Gen. Conf. fund.

J. N. ANDREWS, } Gen. JAMES WHITE, } Conf. D. T. BOURDEAU. } Com.

We also commend to our people Dr. J. H. Ginley, of St. Charles, Saginaw Co., Mich. We think him competent to treat disease upon hygienic principles, and also to give instruction in the true methods of restoring and preserving health. See his advertisement in this paper.

GEN. CONF. COM.

Book and Tract Fund.

By James White

DURING the past three months I have given books to many. The whole amount of what I have given is charged to the Book Fund. After reading the books, many of those who have received them free may choose to pay something, more or less, into the fund. Such are requested to do all they can.

In this time I have trusted books to the amount of $150. Those who have not forwarded the pay to me will please send it direct to the Office. Do this, friends, at your first convenience.

I wish to say to all our people that according to the action of General Conference, our tracts are to be furnished at cost to those who distribute them gratuitously. Also those books and tracts which are given to the poor, by our ministers, will be charged to the book fund at cost. There will be no profits on those books and tracts furnished to the poor from this fund, and our ministers will freely act in this matter without profit or pay.

This is as it should be. When I had penned the above a letter was handed me. I laid down my pen and read as follows:

DEAR BRO. AND SR. WHITE: We saw it noticed in Review No. 20, that Spiritual Gifts, Appeal to Mothers, Appeal to Youth, Sabbath Readings, How to Live, and Charts, would be sent free to those unable to pay. We have been very anxious to get them for some time, but being unable to pay, have not sent for them.

Father has been unable to work for years. Mother's health is very poor. I have a crippled brother who has been unable to sit up for nearly five years. My health is also very poor. I have been unable to do any kind of work for over a year; and I have two little brothers, six and four years old, and we are all dependent on one brother. We are trying to keep all the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. We are trying to prepare for the soon-coming of Christ.

When I had read about one-half of the letter I could proceed no farther, for tears. The books will be sent, and charged to the fund at cost. Almost daily, letters of this kind are coming in. Let them come in. Let the Lord's poor speak freely, especially when there are not others to speak for them.

And to all friends of the cause and the Lord's poor I wish to appeal in behalf of the book and tract fund. This is a noble enterprise; a good and glorious work, and the way is prepared for you to act in the matter with fullest confidence that your means will be well applied. This field for doing good is a wide one, one that promises much good, and one in which all can do something. Let no one feel excused in this matter. I would urge all to come up to this work and do something. Those who have pledged should pay immediately. Let the sums come in from all quarters, and let the books go out in every direction.

JAMES WHITE.

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the Times? Matt. xvi, 3.

Professor Palmieri, of Naples, who is making a rigid scientific investigation into the phenomena accompanying the eruption of Vesuvius, states that he has never seen the magnetic needle so frequently and so seriously disturbed as it is at present, and that the seismograph records at least ten distinct earthquake shocks daily.

—The N. Y. Methodist, of May 2, 1868, places the total number of communicants in the Methodist church, in all its branches, at 3,000,000.

—The Republican Convention just held in Chicago, have nominated, unanimously, U. S. Grant for the next President of the United States, and Schuyler Colfax for Vice-president.

—In the Insane Hospital of Indiana there are forty-seven women crazed by the brutal conduct of drunken husbands.

—Accounts from the south and southeast of France complain of the long-continued drought in that part of France. No rain to speak of has fallen during the last two months.

—The crime of child-murder is on the increase to such a shocking extent in Liverpool that the attention of the government has been directed to the subject, and the Home Secretary has authorized the borough coroner to offer rewards for the detection of the guilty persons.

—A correspondent asks if the Bible is allowed by the government to be circulated in Spain. It is not. It is strictly prohibited. In Madrid, when we were there in February, 1867, a large quantity of Bibles, sent there from England, were under government protection while they were waiting the order for their return whence they came. No one may propagate any other religion than that of Romanism, and the Bible is the worst enemy that Romanism has.—New York Observer.

—A new explosive is announced called “Dynamid,” or “Giant Powder.” It is said that all ordinary blows and the most violent agitation do not affect it; but when a fired fuse, ending in a percussion cap of fulminating mercury, is put into a loose mass, its explosion is immensely powerful. A table-spoonful of it, on a stone covered with a brick, blew the brick into dust, and shattered the stone into kernels. The same amount thus exploded blew a hole through one end of a balanced two-inch plank, on which it had been poured, without disturbing the balance. And its greatest power is seen when used in the toughest kind of rocks.

—The Pope has outraged all morality and decency, by sending to the Queen of Spain—the infamy of whose life is notorious—the Golden Rose, which is the name of a jeweled gift annually bestowed on the royal lady who, during the preceding year, has manifested the greatest zeal for the interests of the Romish Church. Well does a foreign paper declare that, in this case, the Golden Rose crowns the Encyclical, and offers a challenge to the intelligence, morality, and culture, of the age. It is absolutely shocking that the professed Vicar of Christ should send such a testimonial to a woman whose impurity is a world-wide scandal, with these words: “Receive, O beloved daughter in Jesus Christ, this evidence and lasting monument which we wish to give thee of the earnest love we bear thee, as much for thy signal services toward this Apostolic See, as for the high virtues by which thou shinest among women.”

Palestine.—The famous—or rather infamous—colony at Jaffa, under President Adams, still lives, although reduced to about twenty-five persons. It is not so small, however, but that it is still divided by intestine feuds. Adams and wife are about to proceed to England to find recruits and funds. No doubt they will succeed. They have already some English members of the colony, and the English are far more insane on the subject of the Holy Land than Americans. You meet here at every turn some half-cracked man or woman from England, who has come out here to help fulfill the prophecies of Scripture, as he or she understands them. These deluded, and often wealthy, enthusiasts are legitimate game for such rogues as Adams. As far as one can see, the colony now depends for existence upon such game, for no crops have been sown, and there are no apparent means of subsistence. The few travelers who have been fortunate enough to land at Jaffa this year seem to have all taken time to see the colony, and judge for themselves of Adam’s claims. The long-promised road from Jaffa to Jerusalem is now actually making good progress under the pressure of an intimation from Paris that the Empress was about to make a pilgrimage to the Holy City.—Cor. N. Y. Tribune.

The Lord’s Regard for an Oath of Fealty.

By CALVIN GREEN

In the 9th chapter of Joshua we read how by craft the Gibeonites obtained the favor of the Israelites, and gained their protection and favor. Although this covenant was made against the express command of God (See Deut. vii, 2), yet when the nations combined against Gibeon to destroy it for making peace with Israel, the Lord fought for them. Josh. x, 10, 11. And when the zeal of Saul for Israel and Judah in slaying the Gibeonites was followed by a famine of three years (2 Sam. xxi, 1), the Lord’s anger was appeased for such treachery when seven descendants of Saul were slain for his crime of violating a sacred oath. Here we have the faithfulness of God to a doomed people who saved themselves by craft by an oath given in his name. How much more faithful will he be to those who strive to do his will, when he has given so many promises to that effect. How good it would be for us when trouble, trials and temptation come, to trust in these promises, and rely on Him who notices the fall of a sparrow—a bird of no real value—and remain faithful to our post under the kind watchcare of Him who considers us poor, frail creatures of so much worth to him as to number even the hairs of our head. Oh! for that regard for our word and promises to the Lord that he has for his toward us. Let us try, brethren, to fulfill our promises to him by seeking him with all the heart, for it is better to not promise than to promise and not fulfill.

CALVIN GREEN.

Battle Creek, Mich.

Mauna Loa.

THE Sandwich Islands, which have now a special interest as the scene of the grandest volcanic demonstration ever known, are thirteen in number, lying in a curve, of which the remotest points are 350 miles apart. Only seven of these are inhabited, the others being small, rocky, and barren. The largest and easternmost of the group, Hawaii, on which Mauna Loa, the greatest of volcanoes, is found, is about 4,000 square miles in extent, and very mountainous and volcanic. The summit of Mauna Loa is 13,758 feet above the level of the sea, but the chief crater of the mountain, which is three and one-half miles long by two and one-half broad, is on its southeast side, 4,104 feet above the sea. Ordinarily this contains a lake of liquid fire, the reflection of which upon the sky at night is glowing red. A second crater, 15,000 feet in length and 8,000 feet in width, on the summit, seems to be the one from which the present eruption began, but others evidently contributed their full share, especially the new opening in the mountain, which is two miles in length. Some idea of the terrible energy of the outbreak may be formed from the fact that the column of smoke sent up was nearly eight miles in height; the slope and part of the summit of a hill, 1,500 feet high, were lifted bodily and thrown through the air a distance of 1,000 feet; a mass of moist, red earth, a mile in width, was ejected along the surface of the mountain one mile in three minutes; during the severest shock the jar of the earth was so violent that immense precipices were shaken from their foundations and hurled down to the general level; a tidal wave from the sea, sixty feet high, was thrown a quarter of a mile inland; a continuous fissure of the mountain was open from the sea miles up the slope toward the crater, and there was shot up a new island four hundred feet above the sea. During the most violent earthquake shock, all living things, and all buildings, were, of course, thrown violently to the ground. The great tidal wave swept away houses, churches, cattle, and human beings, in a flood higher than the tops of the trees. The earth eruption whelmed thirty persons in a moment. Except that the whole district is comparatively uninhabited, the loss of life would have been frightful. As it was, about one hundred persons and a thousand cattle and horses lost their lives by the floods of fire, earth and

water. Fifteen hundred shocks of earthquake were felt in ten days, accompanied, in many instances, by tidal waves only less powerful than that already mentioned. A district thirty miles in circumference is laid waste by the desolating gases poured over everything from the bowels of the burning mountain. Six miles inland a vast stream of lava is running under ground, here and there sending up jets of fire a thousand feet high. Not only does the sea boil far and wide, and roll back and forth in awful tides, but its waters belch forth from the side of the mountain where the great ejection of red earth took place. The terror of such events to those even who escaped with life must have surpassed all the agonies of ordinary death by violence. What is a burning steamer to an island world, bursting with floods of fire, shaken into ruins, and threatened with the overwhelming inroad of the sea moved from its foundations? The spectacle must have been sublime beyond all description, if one could have looked on it calmly poised in mid-air, but what human brain could admit any other than emotions of horror when hell seemed opening from beneath, when the jar and crash of the earthquake shook off the heads of the mountains, and scattered cliffs and precipices as driven sand along the plain, when all living creatures and all human structures were thrown violently on the ground and a terrible tide of the sea rolled in over the ruin, while over all rose the vast column of smoke eight miles into the air! It is believed that the worst is already passed, but after what has already taken place it seems as if anything might happen from the activity of these volcanic forces. No such demonstration has occurred within the knowledge of human history.—Chicago Tribune.

Meeting at Olcott, N. Y.

By R. F. Cotterill

A fair representation from most of the churches in this quarter was present, and a good interest manifest. We trust the meeting was profitable. That which gave to the meeting a peculiar interest was the response from the young to the invitation to go forward in baptism. On first-day morning we met at the house of Bro. J. Lamson, and, after a discourse on the meaning and use of the institution, called for those who desired to follow the Lord in baptism. We were happily surprised to find the number larger than we anticipated. There were ten young persons, five of each sex, that requested to unite with the people of God, in his own appointed way. Their request was granted by vote of the members of the several churches present. Then we went directly down, a few rods, to the shore of Ontario, where they were buried in the likeness of Christ’s death, and rose again to walk in newness of life. The weather was fair, and the scene was impressive.

This is the first baptizing I have done since my sickness; and I feel to-day that it has not injured me. To make it easy and expeditious, I led them down in pairs, and thus not only gained time, but availed myself of the strength of the young brethren to support the sisters in going in and coming out of the water. Three of the ten had been baptized before, but chose to begin anew and do their first works. The others were beginners: some recently converted. May they all prove faithful followers of the Lord Jesus.

R. F. COTTERILL.

Spiritualism

SPIRITUALISM.—Horace Greeley sums up as the result of a number of years' investigation and observation of Spiritualism, that the thing itself is inexplicable: that men and women have not been made better by it, on the contrary have grown lax in their notions of marriage, divorce and moral purity; and that the aggregate of insanity and suicide has been increased by Spiritualism. A good many others will agree with him.

MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD.

On and after Friday, May 1, 1868, Passenger Trains will run on this road as follows:

GOING WEST.

LEAVE.	MAIL.	DAY EXP.	EVE. EXP.	NIGHT EXP.
Detroit,	7:05 A.M.	10:00 A.M.	5:45 P.M.	9:30 P.M.
Battle Creek,	1:10 P.M.	2:48 P.M.	11:30 P.M.	2:42 A.M.
Chicago, Ar'vo,	8:15 P.M.	9:00 P.M.	6:30 A.M.	9:30 A.M.

GOING EAST.

	MAIL.	DAY EXP.	EVE. EXP.	NIGHT EXP.
Chicago,	4:20 A.M.	7:00 A.M.	5:15 P.M.	9:30 P.M.
Battle Creek,	11:35 A.M.	1:10 P.M.	11:30 P.M.	3:40 A.M.
Detroit, Arrive,	5:30 P.M.	6:00 P.M.	3:40 A.M.	8:30 A.M.

☞ THESE trains all run by Chicago time, which is fifteen minutes slower than Detroit time.

Appalling Floods of Fire, Water and Earth.

HONOLULU, Hawaii, April 15, Via SAN FRANCISCO, May 8, 1868.

The greatest volcanic eruption recorded in modern times has occurred on the Island of Hawaii, one of the group of Sandwich Islands. For some time past it had been observed that the crater of Kilauea was very active, and that a new volcano had been formed. The volcano is the well-known Mauna Loa, and it has an elevation of 13,758 feet. On the 27th of March last the new eruption commenced and has continued up to the latest dates. During twelve days there have been two thousand shocks of earthquake, followed by fearful tidal waves which have destroyed entire villages, and caused the death of one hundred persons.

For fifteen days the district Kona has been the center of motion for the great eruption. A gigantic stream of molten lava is flowing from the summit of Mauna Loa across the lands of Kakuka and Poakini to the sea at Kaulula landing. The slope and part of the summit of a mountain fifteen hundred feet high have been lifted up bodily by the earthquake and thrown over the tops of trees for a distance of over one thousand feet. At Waiohinu a creek has opened, extending from the sea. To as high as the eye can reach on the slope of Mauna Loa the lava is from one to seven feet in width, and an eruption of moist clay was thrown from the side of the mountain, between Lyman's and Richardson's, a distance of two miles and three-quarters, with a width of one mile, in the short space of three minutes. This terrible eruption overwhelmed houses, persons and hundreds of animals, and scattered death and destruction wherever the clay fell.

A column of smoke seven and four-fifths miles in altitude was thrown out of Mauna Loa, obscuring everything for miles around, save where the bright spiral pillars of fire flashed upwards from the mouth of the volcano. The sight was one of the grandest but most appalling ever witnessed, and almost defies description.

The immense tidal waves came rushing in with so great a height that they swept over the tops of the cocoa-nut trees on Kona coast.

VIOLENCE OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

During the severest shock of earthquake, which took place on the 2d of April, no living creature could stand up for a moment. Immense bodies of earth were tossed about at great distances, as if they were feathers wafted from point to point by a storm of wind. Not one stone stands upon another as before in this district. Immense precipices, which have hitherto been a terror to all who have seen them, have been levelled to the earth, and where the ground was formerly smooth and unbroken for miles around, the earth has been rent asunder and upheaved, forming gigantic chasms and precipices.

The entire topographical appearance of the country has been so completely changed that even those who have lived in the desolated district all their lives cannot recognize it or point out localities with which they were formerly familiar. Luckily, this part of the island is sparsely populated, and the lands are not in general cultivation.

The English Situation.

The British Ministry is a Committee of the House of Commons representing the will of the majority, and that majority is the Government. It can be seriously perplexed only by the interference of the Crown. This has not really happened since the time of George III, until now, when the Queen has requested a Ministry defeated by a heavy majority of the Commons not to resign.

Her reason may be that this is a new Parliament, and the Reform Bill passed last year admits new constituencies whose voices she may think have a right to be heard before Parliament is dissolved. But when Mr. Disraeli announced that the Queen had asked him to remain, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright did not hesitate to say that the course was flagrantly unconstitutional. Mr. Disraeli rather tauntingly replied by asking why Mr. Gladstone did not move a resolution of want of confidence. Mr. Gladstone made no answer. But if, after an emphatic majority for all the resolutions offered by him, he should still find that Mr. Disraeli did not intend to withdraw, Mr. Gladstone would unquestionably bring in a motion of want of confidence.

Should Mr. Disraeli, instigated by the Queen, still persist, the Commons would stop the supplies. We do not believe that even Disraeli would venture to face the storm that would then burst, and which would hardly stop before it had swept away the Crown. It is to be presumed, therefore, that Mr. Disraeli will be succeeded by Mr. Gladstone within a few weeks.

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