—A telegraph line is to be constructed through Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo.
—Editor Charles H. Jones, of the St. Louis Republic, has become editor in chief of the New York World.
—The Pacific Iron and Nail Works of this city suffered a loss of $120,000 by fire on the morning of the 6th inst.
—All but one of the recently closed Los Angeles banks have resumed business, showing that the run was in the main a panic of unnecessary fright on the part of depositors.
—A Manchester (N. H.) dispatch says that the large Amoskeag Mills closed on the 31st ult., leaving 8,000 operatives idle.
—A bark from Cherbourg, France, arrived at Gravesend, twenty miles from London, on the 2d inst., with cholera on board.
—Port Louis, the capital of the island of Mauritius, was the scene of a disastrous fire July 23, which destroyed 208 houses.
—There is beginning to be a reaction against the Hungarian and other cheap foreign labor in the Schuylkill Valley (Pa.) factories.
—Fire in the town of Birsk, Ovenburg, Russia, on the 3d inst., destroyed 180 houses. Seven persons were killed, and many others wounded.
—It is said the Southern Pacific Railroad Company has retired 1,000 employees of various classes, and has taken off several regular trains. The wages for June will not be paid until September.
—Not only has the revolution fever in Central America become chronic, but it is now asserted that the president of Salvador is ambitious to become dictator of all the Central American States.
—The city of Fresno, this State, had another destructive fire last week, which caused a property loss of $100,000. This is the third extensive fire in that city within a month, the losses aggregating $300,000.
—Fifty-six of the crew of the new coast defense war ship Monterey deserted at Portland, Oregon, last week. They allege that, owing to the intense heat, their quarters on the vessel were unendurable.
—The latest report from Nicaragua is to the effect that peace has been proclaimed and a treaty signed; but as neither of the hostile armies have been disbanded, hostilities may break out afresh at any time.
—The $100,000,000 mark in the gold reserve in the U. S. Treasury was again reached on the 2d inst., for the first time since April 20, and $10,000,000 in gold was started from England to America last week.
—The Osage Indians refuse to treat with the government for the sale of their reservation of nearly 2,000,000 acres. They are well to do, with nearly 1,000 acres apiece, and don't want to be crowded by whites.
—An El Paso, Texas, dispatch of the 5th inst. reports great damage to railroads by a two days' rain. The Southern Pacific, the Santa Fe, and the Mexican Central have all suffered heavy loss from damaged roadbeds.
—On account of the prevalence of cholera, the Italian Government has consented to the adoption of measures for complete isolation for five days of immigrants on board vessels at Naples before sailing to the United States.
—Advices from the manufacturing towns of Lowell and New Bedford, Mass., say that many of the largest mills are either closing indefinitely, suspending for short terms, or cutting down time. The result is thousands of idle operatives.
—The Russian newspapers show great irritation on account of the tariff action taken by Germany. They fear the prejudice aroused on both sides may endanger the State. The excitement is likely to create dangerous political antagonism.
—A fire in San Francisco July 31 destroyed goods and other property to the value of about $300,000. The principal losers are Buyer & Reich, woolen and fancy goods dealers, and Buckingham & Hecht, dealers in rubber and leather goods.
—The distillers in the Cincinnati district are obliged to come to time with their government tax on liquors that have been in bond for three years, as Secretary Carlisle has refused an extension. The amount due is $3,000,000, and just now it is hard to raise.
—Hon. John Daggett, the new superintendent of the U. S. Mint at San Francisco, has 179 positions to fill by appointment, and has 3,000 applications for the places. Of these places forty-three are occupied by women, and he has more than 500 applications.
—Judge Stein, of the Superior Court of Chicago, has fined five of the directors of the World's Fair $1,000 each, one director $100, and Director-General Davis $250, for closing the gates on Sunday, July 23, in violation of the injunction of the court. The case has been appealed.
—A festival in honor of the birthday of the czar of Russia was held in the Greek Church, Chicago, on the 3d inst. About 300 people were present, and when it was proposed to drink to the health of the czar, a man named Czechki made a vehement speech against crowned heads in general and the czar in particular. Snatching a portrait of the ruler from the table, he dashed it upon the floor and stamped upon it. A free fight followed, but Czechki made his escape by fighting his way through the crowd with a dirk knife, severely cutting several people who attempted to arrest him.
—Congress was convened in extra session on the 7th inst., and there is a prospect of an unprecedented political-financial wrangle, ostensibly for the monetary relief of the country; but whether the result will be for better or worse the future alone will demonstrate. There will be about 100 new members.
—It is said that the Japanese Government is now closing the schools which were established for the higher education of girls. Missionaries think this is largely due to the fact that polygamy is sanctioned by the government, and fears are entertained that if the women become educated they will rebel against the practice.
—The London Lancet says that cholera has been epidemic in Marseilles, France, for three months, but the local officers have kept the matter so well concealed that even the government was deceived in regard to its extent. It transpires that there have been 900 deaths from the disease since the middle of May.
—It is asserted by the Washington correspondent of the San Francisco Examiner that the Chinese Six Companies are raising a $500,000 corruption fund, to be used in procuring the repeal of the Exclusion Act. A United States judge in Los Angeles has decided that the section of the Exclusion Act providing for imprisonment of Chinese who failed to register is unconstitutional.
—Now that the Siamese trouble is settled by France consenting to return to Siam certain territory which England claims that Siam had no right to cede, the powers look back to the critical two days (July 28 and 29) and tremble at the thought of the very narrow escape from war. Lord Rosebery, with a sigh of relief, says, "We were nearer to war with France than at any time since Waterloo."
—Owing to the rapid decline of traffic in the States through which much of the Union Pacific Railroad lines are extended, the company is compelled to greatly reduce its working force in order to curtail expenses. In Kansas and Nebraska the wheat crop is very short, and in the States further west the mining interests are practically at a standstill, necessitating the withdrawal of many of the regular trains.
—There have been 6,666 deaths from cholera in Mecca and 2,318 in Jedda since the present epidemic broke out. Most of these victims were pilgrims to the holy city of the Mohammedans. The caravans in which they travel are breeding places of disease, while in Mecca itself there is absolutely no heed taken to prevent the spread of disease. The pilgrims crowd certain quarters and even in the best years hundreds perish.
—Reports of bank and other business failures are still rife throughout the country. Several large manufacturing houses have closed during the past week, and many are running on short time. That such general stringency should prevail in a year of fairly good crop returns is a mystery to many, although it is generally attributed to the enforced depreciation of silver by the great money dealers of the world who have it in their power to manipulate the currency.
—The city of Toronto is to have another contest in the matter of Sunday street cars. For some time the cars have been prohibited from running on that day, and the company has proposed to pay the expenses of another election to test the mind of the public. The city council has accepted the proposition and named the 26th inst. as the day for a special election. The church element is protesting against a special election, and urging that the matter be postponed until the regular election in January.
—A pitched battle near Apia, Samoa, July 8, finally decided the long-standing feud between the government of King Malietoa and the revolutionary chief, Mataafa. The forces of the latter were completely overcome, and Mataafa and twenty-eight of his chiefs were at last accounts prisoners on a British gunboat. They were to be kept there until the three protectorate powers, through their representatives, should decide what to do with them. The Samoans are all nominal Christians, but the victors celebrated their victory in the old style—beheading a number of their enemies and carrying their heads to the capital as trophies.
News and Notes.
By Editor
FOR THE WEEK ENDING AUGUST 7.
RELIGIOUS.
—Since the beginning of the present year seven of Bishop Taylor's missionaries in Africa have died.
—At a Japanese Mission in San Francisco, July 30, sixteen adults were taken into the church (M. E.) by Pastor Ishizaka. Two were women.
—In this city a new mission has been opened, which a local paper describes as being a combination of old-fashioned Methodism and First-day Adventism.
—All the retail stores in this city will hereafter be closed on Sunday. The Clerks' Association, backed by the Federated Trades, has induced the merchants to take this step.
—A Rome dispatch of the 5th inst. says that it is expected there that Satolli, the papal delegate to the United States, will soon be officially recognized by the government.
—The Missionary Society of the M. E. Church has in China 118 American missionaries and assistants and 502 native helpers of all grades. The appropriation for the support of this work the current year is $183,501.
—Mr. Minas Tcheraz, now of London, will be one of the representatives of the Armenian Church at the World's Parliament of Religions to convene at Chicago September 11. He represented the Armenian people in the Congress at Berlin, for which service he was banished from Turkey.
—The annual synod of the Catholic diocese of Denver, Colorado, last week, passed a resolution approving Bishop Matz' policy of denying the sacrament to children who attend the public schools. As Papal Delegate Satolli, only a month ago, condemned the bishop's school policy, the synod stands in virtual antagonism of the delegate's position.
—While the Presbyterian General Assembly one year ago withheld its indorsement of the proposed Parliament of Religions at Chicago, yet a large number of Presbyterian ministers are coming to its support and will no doubt participate in its work. It is hard for a popular denomination to stand aloof from any popular move on the mere matter of principle.
—The ministerial fraternity of San Francisco work somewhat at cross purposes in the matter of the proposed Midwinter Fair. One class advocate the Fair from their pulpits as a means of providing work for many needy people, while others virtually discourage the project by demanding that it must not be held unless there is a guarantee that the gates shall be closed on Sunday.
—During the past year the American Tract Society has circulated 2,430,700 periodicals and 202 colporters have made 154,329 visits. The Benevolent Department has received in gifts and legacies $101,471.73, the amounts from other sources making a total of $204,142.25 in this department. The Business Department has received $256,624.02. In fifty-two years the colporters have made 14,163,167 family visits.
—M. Pobedonostseff, the Russian Minister of Religion, is said to have made use of most opprobrious epithets with regard to the two English Quakers who have been recently visiting Russia with the object of inquiring into the condition of the persecuted Protestants, and expresses his determination to thoroughly cleanse Orthodox Russia of these pestilent heretics, though all the fools in England try to prevent him.
—Dr. Edward Thomson, Pacific Coast secretary of the American Sabbath Union, reports the following victories in California,—the suppression of Sunday saloons in the counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Lake, and San Benito, and in the cities of Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, and San Jose. Sunday traffic has been discontinued by agreement in Bakersfield; the State Citrus Fair was closed on Sunday, and the last Legislature passed a one-day-in-seven rest law. As to the latter, however, many advocates of Sunday laws disclaim it as a victory.
THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY.
By John Harvey Kellogg
(J. H. KELLOGG, M. D., EDITOR.)
A TWENTY-FOUR page monthly journal, devoted to the various phases of medical missionary and benevolent work. It contains each month also articles of general interest on mission fields, and items of missionary intelligence. Each number is illustrated.
Published by S. D. A. Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association.
Price, 25 cents per year. Address Medical Missionary, Battle Creek, Mich.
Editorial Notes
By Editor
READ the article on "The Church of Christ," beginning on page 629.
THE various articles of Brother Corliss on the power and Spirit of God in us and in the world, with its various manifestations and gifts, close with this number. We know that all have been carefully read, and we ask for such a reading of the one in our present issue on "The Gift of Prophecy."
FROM a circular issued by the publishers of the STANDARD DICTIONARY, the Funk & Wagnalls Co., 18 and 20 Astor Place, New York, we learn that it is probable that the dictionary will be published before 1893 closes. We know many are anxiously waiting for it, and we believe that we can assure those who have subscribed through the influence of the SIGNS, that they will not be disappointed when they receive the work. We believe that the "Standard" will be the standard.
WE are about to begin a series of articles on the question of religious legislation as related to spiritual and religious things from the standpoint of the word of God. These will be written by different persons who have given this subject special thought and study, and we hope that the series when completed will form a complete groundwork of the Bible teaching on this important subject. If the articles we present cover this ground, they will help our readers who really desire the truth, to become intelligent upon that subject which erelong will shake the religious and political worlds as they have never before been shaken. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
SOME of our Oakland contemporaries which have spoken so emphatically against the unchristian boycott of the World's Fair because it opened on Sunday, are justifying the very things they have condemned, in their appeal for the Clerks' Union. They really advise a boycott of those merchants who will not close Sundays. Now we believe that every clerk ought to have his day of rest, but we do not believe in coercion or oppression to force someone to give them that day of rest. Let them have the manliness to stand by principle, whether the merchants will stand with them or not; it always pays in the long run, and principle which will not endure a little test is worthless. In fact, it isn't principle. It is policy or expediency.
THIS is the Christian(?) spirit of the Christian Statesman as expressed in its issue of July 29:—
We hear of a preacher who did not mention on July 16, either in prayer or preaching, the great Sabbath-closing victory at Chicago. He would do for the leading part of another story on "The Man without a Country." He ought to be anchored in a balloon between heaven and earth, as useless for either.
Probably this minister felt that he was called upon to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the word of God; with that the Sunday-closing question has no common interest.
REALLY how strong is Germany against Socialism? By concessions she purchased the Polish vote. Had she not done this, the Army bill would have been defeated. Imperialism is doomed, and the pope is about the only great ruler who is astute enough to see it. He declares in his recent Encyclical on Labor that "economists and lawmakers" "must acknowledge democratic socialism to have ripened into a power of which it is necessary to take account, and in face of which it is incumbent to adopt wise and prudent tactics." And the pope is doing it. His horn has eyes; the horns of the powers of Europe are not only blind but eyeless.
OUR ably edited Presbyterian contemporary across the Bay, the Occident, has again changed its form and dress. It is now published by the denomination. Dr. W. W. Faris, who has published and edited it for some months in the past, is still retained on the editorial corps of twelve, the first named of whom is Dr. R. F. Coyle, of Oakland. The office editor is Florence H. Miller. The appearance of the Occident in its enlarged form is much improved, with the exception of the heading, "The Occident," which is about the worst-looking specimen of its class we remember ever to have seen, unless we except one of the several styles tried in the space of a few months by our W. C. T. U. sisters on the Union Signal. We advise the Occident to try again.
God Is the Same.—The following is the introduction of a sermon on John 14:7, by Dr. A. J. Gordon (Baptist), preached in Chicago, and reported in the Inter Ocean of July 17:—
This text, containing the promise of the Comforter, marks the transition from the old dispensation to the new. Hitherto the Spirit had moved men from without; henceforth he was to impel them from within. The external commandment written on tables of stone had up to this time given guidance to men; now the inward decalogue, "the law of the spirit of life" written on the tables of the heart, was to give direction to Christ's disciples. It is a great word of the new covenant: "He shall be in you."
This is a sample of modern day theology. It does not know God's word. Men who were truly moved in the past dispensation were just as much impelled by the Spirit of God within them as they are in this dispensation. Read David's prayer: "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts [a work which the Spirit of God alone could do]; and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom." "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me [compare with Acts 15:9; Eph. 2:10; Col. 3:10]; cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me thy salvation and uphold me with thy free Spirit." Ps. 57:6, 10-12. Compare with Rom. 3:9; Eph. 4:30; and 2 Cor. 3:17. Even Pharaoh recognized that the Spirit of God was within Joseph (Gen. 41:38), and Nebuchadnezzar saw the same power in Daniel (Dan. 4:8, 18). The same Spirit was in Joshua (Num. 27:18), and dwelt in all the holy prophets (1 Peter 1:10, 11). It was by that Spirit that Noah was impelled to preach (1 Peter 3:18, 19; 2 Peter 2:5); and through faith by the power of that Spirit he was made righteous (Heb. 11:7), even as we must exercise the same faith and lay hold of the same Spirit (Gal. 3:14). And the context of the last scripture shows that it was in this very way that Abraham became righteous. See Isa. 63:10, 11, 14. The wrong idea comes from ignorance of the simple facts that men are ever the same in nature, and God is ever the same in every respect. God's Spirit has been working in the world and in man since it brooded over the primitive waters and brought order out of chaos.
Signs of the Times
By Editor
OAKLAND, CAL., MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 1893.
We send no papers from this office without pay in advance unless by special arrangement. When persons receive copies without ordering them, they are sent by other parties, and we can give no information in regard to them. Persons thus receiving copies of the Signs are not indebted to the office, and will not be called upon for pay. Please read the papers and hand them to your friends to read.
SIMPLE WATER TEST.
UNDER the above title Florida Health Notes, the official bulletin of the State Board of Health, gives the following, which it may be well for our readers to use and preserve:—
A very good method, and simple in its procedure, to ascertain the quality of drinking water, is by the permanganate of potassium test, which chemical loses its purple color in solution through oxidation in the presence of organic matter.
By placing twelve grains of caustic potash and three grains of permanganate of potassium in an ounce of distilled water, a solution is had by which the purity of any given water can be ascertained. If to a glass of water one or two drops of this permanganate solution imparts a decided color, the water is drinkable; but if, on the contrary, the solution immediately loses its color and disappears, the water should be rejected for drinking purposes as probably dangerous.
Rome and Protestant Unity
By Editor
A recent number of the Catholic News of New York has the following, which confirms what the SIGNS has said again and again:—
The Rev. Charles A. Briggs has just come out the worse for a tussle with the inspired prophets. This should prevent him from making vast prophecies, as the following: "That in time Protestants and Roman Catholics would be united, work under one standard creed, and break down the barriers which have in a great degree hindered the evangelization of the world." We hear a great deal of "union" and "unity," etc., from the Protestant end of the bargain. It takes two to make a bargain, and if the Protestants are one, then the Catholics are not the other. There is only one creed, and that is our creed. If the Protestants accept that, they are not Protestants. There is only one chance of unity, and that is the total annexation. Our Protestant friends will do well to learn that fact.
Rome changes in policy, but she never compromises with Protestants.
IMPORTANT APPOINTMENTS.
By N. C. McClure
BY ELDER N. C. M'CLURE.
Northern California Camp Meeting.
THE Northern California camp meeting will be held at Eureka, Humboldt Co., commencing Thursday night, August 17, and lasting till the 27th inclusive. All who wish tents and have not already ordered will please do so at once through the elders of the churches. It is expected that Elders M. C. and F. M. Wilcox, J. H. Morrison, and the writer, also Dr. Sanderson, from the Health Retreat, will be in attendance. It is earnestly desired that all our friends throughout that part of the Conference will be present.
Dedication Services.
The dedication of the new church at Pasadena will take place Sunday, September 17.
Southern California Camp Meeting.
This important meeting will be held at Santa Ana, Orange Co., September 21 to October 1. It is expected that the attendance will be large, and it is desired that ample accommodations be made in season, so all who desire tents will please send in their order at once, through the elders of the church to which they belong, or address Elder N. C. McClure, 1491 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, as we do not want to ship tents unless they are ordered.