Earlier text: THE NATIONS ARE ANGRYThe Warning Message of Our Day
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
Thousands of people will study the lesson of Sodom to-day, and will wonder why they and those others listened not to the call of God, and knew not the time of their visitation; and yet will reject the message of God to-day, and will not now know the time of their visitation. It is easy enough now to believe that the flood, or this destruction of Sodom, came and destroyed all but those who believed and escaped. It is easy enough now to express surprise at the people there for not believing the message of God. It is easy enough now to do all this, and at the same time do exactly as they did in rejecting the message of God in our day, as they did in theirs. God has now in the earth a message of warning, of entreaty, and of salvation, as really as he had in the days of Noah or of Lot. It must be believed and heeded as really if we would escape a destruction as real as was then. While the world stands, Paul's words to the men of Antioch are ever apt: "Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish; for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in nowise believe, though a man declare it unto you." Acts 13: 40, 41. J. Angels' Speech, Wisdom, and Appearance
20. Do angels talk with each other and with men? "Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Dan. 8:13, 14. 21. Are they supposed to be eloquent in speech? "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." 1 Cor. 13:1. 22. What does the Bible show as to the wisdom of angels? "My lord is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all things that are in the earth." 2 Sam. 14:20. 23. Are there some things which they do not know? "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of Heaven, but my Father only." Matt. 24:36. 24. Do they have to learn by study and investigation? "Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven; which things the angels desire to look into." 1 Pet. 1:12. 25. What can you say of the appearance of the angels? "His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude." Dan. 10:6. "And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments." Luke 24:4. 26. What is taught on this point in Acts 6:15. "And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." Acts 6:15. 27. How does Luke speak of them? "And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel." Acts 1:10. 28. Do the angels grow old and feeble and die as men do? "Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Luke 20:36. 29. Who will be like them? "But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Luke 20:35, 36. 30. Is not this more desirable than all earthly treasure? The Work of Sabbath-School Teachers
THERE are no better workers for Christ and his cause than faithful and intelligent Sabbath-school teachers. They take their place alongside of the parent and the pastor, and in many cases do a better and more lasting work than either. Their work has the value of voluntary service, and is therefore apt to be appreciated in after years by those for whom it is performed; it is done usually at a period in young life when memory is tenacious, and affection sincere, and the heart tender, and the mind awake. Seeds of sacred knowledge, planted at such a time, in such a soil, are not often destined to that decay which means utter dissolution. They may lie dormant long, but there is a time for their development in the flower and fruitage of a good life.—Sel. Judging Without Sufficient Information
By John Locke
HE that judges, without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss.—Locke. Procrastination the Mother of Failure
Procrastination is the mother of failure. PERHAPS you knew that I was guardian to an orphaned nephew of mine, a promising young fellow, who died not long ago while a member of ——— Academy. I sent him there because I honestly thought it was the safest place in the world for a really good, conscientious, sensible boy, such as he was, who had to be fitted for college somewhere, and who would be exposed, I thought, to as few temptations there as anywhere on the round earth, so far as I knew. All went well until the thirtieth day of last May, when I was telegraphed by the principal to come at once, as my nephew was very ill. I found him a ghastly sight—a pallid and empty shell, without life enough inclosed to last a week. His doctor said that his constitution seemed to be one of those which are particularly ill-adapted to resist, at that critical age through which he was passing, the nicotine poison; and that cigarettes, of which it seems he had been smoking excessively during the winter, had killed him. It was a sad funeral, but somehow I didn't take the sadness of it home to me then, as I have since. The next night I was sitting after tea in my library there, before the fire, smoking my pipe as usual, when my wife and Harry came in, and Harry said, "Please, father, tell me about poor cousin. What made him die?" I said—and I thought it a good time to lay an anchor to windward in Harry's case—the fact was that he had been very imprudent and unwise indeed, and had smoked too many cigarettes, which imprudence, I was afraid, had killed him. Some conversation followed, which ended with Harry's saying, "I think, father, it is a dreadful thing to smoke cigarettes. I shall always smoke a pipe as you do." "Not much, young man, you won't; if you do, I'll thrash you." "But why not, father? Can't I do what you do? You wouldn't do a bad thing, I am sure; you are too good a papa." My wife broke in just then, and said, "My dear, I think it is important that you should make it very clear to Harry, and do it now, why it's right for you to smoke a pipe, and wrong for him. If anything should happen to you, and I be left to have him to bring up, I want that point made clear in his mind seasonably." I said, "Ah, well, I'll try and make it clear." I did try awhile, but not with my usual success; for neither she nor he seemed fully to understand it. The fact was, I didn't understand it myself so well as I had supposed I did; while my mind wandered a good deal as I talked. I kept the noise agoing, but I was inwardly thinking: "There's something terribly awkward about this. I wonder if it pays? Do I really care enough about tobacco to risk harming Harry here?" And just then it uncomfortably came to my mind how my poor nephew had said to me, just before his death, that his teacher several times had urged him not to smoke, and he had replied that his "mother's last charge was to do as Uncle William did, and it would be all right; and Uncle William smoked." I made up my mind then and there; and, after a moment of silence, I took my pipe from my mouth, and knocking the ashes out of it over the andiron leg, I said, "Look here, Harry, do you see the inside of that pipe?" "Yes, sir." "Is it full or empty?" "Empty, sir." "Yes; well, it never will be full any more. That was the last pipe-charge of tobacco that your father will ever smoke. He don't propose to have you stumbling over his pipe into your poor cousin's grave. And tomorrow morning we will emphasize this. We will form a procession, and we'll march to the weeping willow out there by the brook, and we'll dig a little grave there; and in it we'll bury all the pipes and cigar-holders and tobacco that can be found in this house; and we'll sing Burns's song, 'For the sake of somebody,' And we'll set up a neat marble monument over the grave, with a Latin epitaph, so that you, my boy, shall remember it, at least until you grow big and learned enough to tell what the legend means." And we did.—Congregationalist. WHAT THE CHILDREN READ.
By Mary Wager-Fisher
ONE cannot but wonder what will be the outcome in the quality of the next generation of men and women, morally and intellectually, who are to-day the boys and girls for whose entertainment an altogether unprecedented amount and variety of literature is prepared, and by them read. Even in the realm of the sciences, the tendency of the age is to construct, if possible, a royal road to learning. With fascinating text, and pictures equally so, that leave little room for the action of the imagination, the youth of to-day are entertained and instructed in a manner hitherto unrealized. In the history of nearly all men and women whose superiority has left its impress on the race, and the details of whose lives are familiar to us, we find that the books they read were few, and that these were read and re-read until thoroughly absorbed in the mind. And the farther back we go—even to those glorious writers of antiquity whose writings for ages have been the delight and solace of the best intellects—we return to minds that were innocent of the daily newspaper, the monthly magazine, or "popular literature." The minds that were writing for all time were formed on the basis of thought, of observation, and the social interchange of ideas. That the abundant current literature designed for the young is, for the most part, innocent, is undoubtedly true; but mere innocence and harmlessness, when filling the mind to the exclusion of what could give it vigor and sturdiness, become vicious. And in looking over the land to-day, and around the reading-table of every intelligent American family, what do we find the children, for the most part, reading? Stories, stories, stories! How many boys of sixteen have read Sir Francis Bacon until they are thoroughly "Baconized," as I heard the author of "A Fool's Errand" say he was at that age—not in a boasting spirit, but incidentally, in speaking of his boyhood and of his father's library. And how many girls of thirteen are reading the poets of antiquity, as was Mrs. Browning at that age? Now, what men and women read after twenty-one years is a matter of small consequence in comparison with what boys and girls read prior to that age. If, in the matter of obedience, it is conceded that one cannot begin too early with a child, the same may as truthfully be said of his reading. Not only is it true that the writers, artists, inventors, discoverers, and doers of things that have helped and elevated the human race, have been students of fact, readers of those books that developed the mind, and obliged them to think, but it is equally true that happiness and safety lie in the same direction. How honored has our country been by men and women whose childhood's reading was bounded by the Bible, by Homer, "The Pilgrim's Progress," and "Paradise Lost"! But what can we safely expect from a generation of minds through which unceasingly filters a stream of the modern popular current literature? The vigor of the mind is washed away by this continuous flow of "entertaining" reading, which not only saps the life of creative imagination, but devours in its immeasurable maw the golden hours of youth—those priceless hours in which lie all the making, all the prosperity, and all the usefulness of the future man and woman. Most parents are desirous of giving their children an education; but, in their ignorance or their thoughtlessness, fail at the very outset in not having their reading properly directed. No subsequent advantages can atone for these misdirected and lost opportunities of youth,77 and the wail of many a man and woman is, "Oh, that I had been led to read books in my youth—my golden youth, that was wasted on trash!" As aids and abettors in this vicious business the average Sunday-school library stands pre-eminent. It begins with the infant class, and retains its hold upon it until childhood is gone and maturity well-nigh reached. The complaint of a Philadelphia father that the four Sunday-school novels of 300 pages each that his four daughters bring home weekly from the Sunday-school had become the bane of his household, is by no means a solitary instance. Twelve hundred pages of "moral," nay, silly, garrulity imbibed each week by growing girls! Think of it, all you in whose homes and round whose hearthstones similar thieves of time, of mental vigor and strength, of high purpose, of manly endeavor, of future usefulness, and, above all, of sturdy, abiding character, hover in the shape of popular literature for young folks in its thousand forms! As the foe of intellectual culture and development there is no other so insidious and so powerful. And who is to blame?—Mary Wager-Fisher. The Home Circle.
By Frances Ridley Havergal
I AM so weak, dear Lord, I cannot stand
One moment without thee;
But oh! the tenderness of thine enfolding!
And oh! the faithfulness of thine upholding!
And oh! the strength of thy right hand!
That strength is enough for me. I am so needy, Lord, and yet I know
All fullness dwells in thee;
And hour by hour that never-failing treasure,
Supplies and fills in overflowing measure,
My least, my greatest need. And so
Thy grace is enough for me. It is so sweet to trust thy word alone.
I do not ask to see
The unveiling of thy purpose, or the shining
Of future light on mysteries untwining;
Thy promise-roll is all my own—
Thy word is enough for me. The human heart asks love. But now I know
That my heart hath from thee
All real, and full, and marvelous affection;
So near, so human! Yet divine perfection
Thrills gloriously the mighty glow;
Thy love is enough for me. [broad,
There were strange soul-depths, restless, vast, and
Unfathomed as the sea,
An infinite craving for some infinite stilling;
But now thy perfect love is perfect filling;
Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord, my God,
Thou, THOU art enough for me!
—Frances Ridley Havergal. THE human family living to-day on the earth consists of about 1,450,000,000 individuals; not less, probably more. These are distributed over the earth's surface, so that now there is no considerable part where man is not found. In Asia, where he was first planted, there are now approximately about 800,000,000, densely crowded; on an average, 120 to the square mile. In Europe there are 320,000,000, averaging 100 to the square mile; not so crowded, but everywhere dense, and at points over-populated. In Africa there are 210,000,000. In America, North and South, there are 110,000,000, relatively thinly scattered and recent. In the islands, large and small, probably 10,000,000. The extremes of the white and black are as 5 to 3; the remaining 700,000,000 intermediate brown and tawny. Of the race 500,000,000 are well clothed—that is, wear garments of some kind to cover their nakedness; 700,000,000 are semi-clothed, covering inferior parts of the body; 250,000,000 are practically naked. Of the race 500,000,000 live in houses partly furnished with the appointments of civilization; 700,000,000 in huts or caves with no furnishings; 260,000,000 have nothing that can be called a home, are barbarous and savage. The range is from the topmost round—the Anglo-Saxon civilization, which is the highest known—down to naked savagery. The portion of the race lying below the line of human condition is at the very least three-fifths of the whole, or 900,000,000.—N. Y. Commercial News. THE EFFECT OF INTEMPERANCE IN THE CONGO.
MR. STANLEY in one of his lectures in New York gave good strong testimony in favor of total abstinence. He was asked about the climate and healthfulness of the river valley, as compared with the uplands, and of the coast as compared with the interior. Speaking on this point he said:— "Lieutenant Grant is a splendid, stalwart-looking man from Luxembourg. He has an ambition to distinguish himself. He does not like the post assigned him, so I give him other work and fifty men to continue the road from Manyanga to Stanley Pool. He has with him one bottle of Burgundy. He will keep that for a gala day—the birthday of the king. He means to drink that to a larger number of days to His Majesty. Some five miles on the road he meets a friend coming from Stanley Pool, and, "How do you do? I am delighted to see you." The friend has just one bottle of brandy. They club together and they bring out—one his bottle of Burgundy and the other the brandy. Next morning the work must go on, of course. The trader bids him "Good-by," and the officer must muster his working parties and proceed. But the effect of that night's dissipation is pretty soon seen. At nine o'clock the sun comes out strong. Before six o'clock that afternoon he is in his grave. "You ask about the climate and healthfulness of the river valleys. How can you understand unless I specify certain points to illustrate? "A man has been with me on the Upper Congo two years and nine months. He has distinguished himself. I can recommend him to anybody for industry, fidelity, and attention to his duties. I wish to preserve him. He has slight dysenteric symptoms, and I say to him: 'If I thought I could keep you from wine and liquor, I would send you to the coast, and send you home with good care; and if I had authority to bind you under oath, so that you could not touch a glass of liquor, I should be quite sure that you would arrive at home, and after a residence there of from three to six months you would be prepared to return.' He said: 'But I promise you that I will not touch a drop of liquor.' 'I do not want to exercise any restraint over you, but my firm conviction is that if you do touch it you will never reach home. Good-by. Boys, carry him.' "I give him a dozen hammock-bearers. He reaches the coast. The doctors attend him. He recovers from the slight dysenteric malady. They say now he is in a fit condition to go home. That evening he swaps his coat to a native for a bottle of gin, and by midnight he is dead. "Therefore, when you ask about the climate and the healthfulness of the river valleys, people who are suffering from the depressing influences of such instances of fatality will naturally say, with great force: 'Such and such a man died, and such and such a man, and so on; and look at that cemetery at Banana Point!' Go there, and you will see head-stones marked: 'Here lie the mortal remains of So and So, belonging to Stanley's expedition,' and 'Sergeant So and So, belonging to Stanley's expedition,' and you can count twenty or thirty. The people in America and England do not understand that there have been such fatalities. "But they will not tell you the causes; and it is right that I should follow the dead to their graves and say that such and such a man died from such and such a cause? "There was a Scotch engineer who came out recommended by the British East India Company. He was a genius. He knew the tricks of making the rudest structure comfortable and home-like. He takes charge of the steamer Belgic to go down to the mouth of the Congo. Three days afterward I ask the captain where his engineer is. He is dead. He was found sitting on a chair with a bottle of brandy in his hand—dead." A good temperance speech that; and coming from the gentleman from whom it does it ought to have great weight.—Christian Standard. IN Mr. Wyatt Gill's interesting volume, "Jottings from the Pacific," recently published by the American Tract Society, is a description of a curious and much-dreaded fish which inhabits the waters of the South Pacific. It is called the sting-ray on account of two long, bony spines which are fixed in its tail and which it uses to kill its prey. It sometimes attains the length of fourteen or fifteen feet, but rarely exceeds twelve. Its mode of capturing its victims is to bury itself in the sand, its eyes and forehead alone visible and its whip-like tail appearing as a stick in the water. The moment an unwary fish attempts to glide past the lurking-place of the monster, it is instantly struck down and devoured. Natives wading or diving in the water sometimes have the misfortune to tread upon the buried fish. In an instant the intruder is lassoed and the serrated spine of the tail driven into the flesh. The point of this terrible weapon is sure to snap off; if in the body, there is no hope of life; if in the leg or foot, it must be taken out from the opposite side, as the barbs make it impossible to pull it out. The natives of the islands of this region assert that this fish has the power of shooting with one of its spines when attacked. Mr. Gill speaks of seeing the spine of a sting-ray sticking in the corner of a house at Taunu. It is said to have been the custom of the natives in former times to rid themselves of their foes by means of the spines of the ray. The spines were split, for the purpose, into three parts. Each part was called in the native tongue aitu tangata, that is, "a human god," the gods being the arbiters of human destiny. One of these splinters fixed in a place where it would enter the body of a foe would soon produce death by working its way inward to a vital part. The general method was to fix a splintered spine upright under the mat of a sleeping victim, so that in turning over in sleep it would be sure to enter the person and do its deadly work. The sting-ray is much esteemed for food among all the islands of the Pacific. In the Hervey group, it is called, on account of its shape, the "bird-like Tamanu." Adversity and the Precious Grain
"WHEN God's flail of adversity is upon us, we should not be like the chaff, which flies into the face of the thresher, but like the precious grain, which lies at his feet." WHAT IS REAL FOOD.
By B. W. Richardson
WE ought to learn, as a first truth, the truth that the oftener we go to the vegetable world for our food the oftener we also go to the first, and therefore to the cheapest, source of supply. The commonly accepted notion that when we eat animal flesh we are eating food at its prime source, cannot be too speedily dissipated or too speedily replaced by the knowledge that there is no primitive form of food—albuminous, starchy, osseous—in the animal world itself, and that all the processes of catching an inferior animal, of breeding it, rearing it, keeping it, killing it, dressing and selling it, mean no more nor less than additional expenditure throughout for bringing into what we have been taught to consider an acceptable form of food, the veritable food which the animal itself found, without any such preparation, in the vegetable world. With the light of these natural facts filling the rational mind, the tendencies of all advanced scholars in thrift should be to find out plans for feeding all the community direct from the lap of the earth; to endeavor to discover how the fruits of the earth may be immediately utilized as food; and to impress science into our service, so that she, in her laboratories, may prepare the choicest viands, minus the necessity of making a lower animal the living laboratory for the sake of gratifying what is just a little higher than a cannibal propensity.—B. W. Richardson. DR. ALEXANDER contributes to the Phrenological Journal the following inventory of symptoms caused by this poisonous and deadly weed: "The derangements which the habitual use of tobacco produces in a more or less pronounced form, are as follows:— "1. Headache over the eyes. 2. Nervous headache without sickness. 3. Nervous headache with sickness of the stomach. 4. Deafness. 5. Partial blindness or amaurosis. 6. Running at the eyes. 7. Cancer of the lips. 8. Consumption, preceded for years by a cough. 9. Asthma. 10. Dyspepsia. 11. Palpitation of the heart. 12. Paralysis of the upper part of the body. 13. Neuralgia, especially of the head, face, and neck. 14. Swelling of the gums, and rotting of the teeth. 15. Enfeeblement of the lymphatics. 16. Enlargement of the glands of the face and neck, making the chewer thick about the cheeks and lips. 17. Lethargy. 18. Morbid appetite for food, especially highly flavored food. 19. Indistinct taste. 20. Indistinct smell. 21. Obtuseness of the moral sense. 22. Imperfect sense of touch. 23. Uncleanliness of person. 24. Stertorous, or snoring, sleep. 25. A sense of deafness and of great debility on first waking from sleep, until one has had a chew or a smoke. 26. Confirmed and incurable disease, and premature death."—Our Rest. —Moody is holding meetings in Chicago. —It is stated that thirty-three missionary societies now have workers in Africa. —The Scotch Free Church has recently established a mission among the Arabian Mohammedans. —A Catholic priest at Johnstown, Pa., has refused the communion to any child attending the public schools. —The United Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board sent out thirteen missionaries last month for India and Egypt. —According to a recent statement the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions is two hundred thousand dollars in debt! —An encouraging feature of evangelistic work in India is said to be the presence of women of the middle class at preaching places. —According to the report of their last General Conference, the Universalists have in this country 900 churches and 35,214 members. —It is stated that the number of candidates for the ministry of the Episcopal Church in the United States is 344, a smaller number than at any time since 1868. —It is stated that the distress occasioned in the Turkish Empire by poverty and excessive taxation, greatly hindered missionary operations in that country during 1886. —On the occasion of the coming jubilee the Pope will present $100,000 to the Societas de Propaganda Fide, a society in Rome charged with the management of Roman Catholic missions. —According to the New Haven (Conn.) Union, small boys are arrested in that city for skating on Sunday, but riding on a bicycle is a favorite and entirely legal diversion. Sleigh-riding is permitted, but coasting is vigorously prohibited. From which it appears that there are some fine distinctions made in Sunday laws. —Ingersoll is credited with saying not long since that "the time is coming when a man will be judged by what he does with his money." Upon which the Pittsburg Commercial Gazette remarks that "this is tough news for those people who pay one dollar for a front seat to laugh at his shallow blasphemies." —Rev. George F. Pentecost, of Brooklyn, has written an article for the Independent, in which he aims to prove that the week of prayer ought to be abolished. The reason which he gives for this conclusion is that the spiritual life has been taken out of the institution by an excess of red tape in arranging its topics. —The New York correspondent of a Pittsburgh, Pa., paper complains that upon a recent Sunday there were 40,000 skaters on the ice in the lake in Central Park. He adds: "These thousands were not by any means the non-church people. Pastors could have seen now and then the communicants of their own congregation in the mass of laughing movers." —In giving a brief review of foreign missions for the year 1886, the Christian Statesman says, "In Roman Catholic Europe there has been little change in the attitude of governments or the Papacy." This is probably true if we understand it to apply to the attitude of governments and the Papacy towards Protestant missions; but if we understand it to mean that the attitude of some of the civil governments of Europe has not changed toward the Papacy, then it is a great mistake. The victory which the cohorts of Rome gained in the revision of the May Laws in Germany is not a "little change;" and the events of the past year have shown that though the Pope has at present no territory, his political influence is ten times as great as that of any princes who rule over millions of subjects and thousands of square miles of territory. —Slogger Sullivan broke his wrist in a recent engagement. —A pier was burnt in New York a few days ago. Loss, $80,000. —Four children were burned to death one day last week, in a fire in Oil City, Pa. —A dispatch from Tonquin says that the French have again defeated the rebels. —Twenty-five hundred men and girls employed in a carpet factory in New York have struck. —A heavy earthquake was felt in the mountains twelve miles south of Huron, Cal., on the 28th ult. —Twenty-three persons are reported to have been frozen to death in Saxony during the recent snowstorm. —A disastrous gale occurred January 24 off the Nova Scotia coast. A schooner was driven ashore and six lives were lost. —The proposed woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution was defeated in Congress by a vote of 16 ayes to 34 noes. —It is said that Senator Riddleberger intends resigning because, being a poor man, very little courtesy is shown him in the Senate. —The town of Port Deposit, Md., is partially under water, owing to the floods caused by the breaking up of the ice in the Susquehanna. —A cargo of ostriches from Natal, Africa, has arrived at Galveston, Texas. The birds are for an ostrich farm near Los Angeles, Cal. —An explosion occurred January 23 on a Louisville and Nashville passenger train, killing the engineer and fireman and injuring several passengers. —Trouble is expected in the Samoan Islands. The natives are buying fire-arms and ammunition, and a rising against King Malietoa is being fermented. —The British bark Aberfeldy from San Francisco was sunk off Lowestaff, England, by a collision with the British steamer Mascotte. The crew were saved. —The Breen bill for the suppression of the houses of vice in the Upper Peninsula, unanimously passed the Lower branch of the Michigan Legislature January 26. —A woman died a few days since in Mayfield, California, from the effects of the bite of a tarantula. Though this insect is very poisonous, its bite is not generally fatal. —The San Francisco Evening Bulletin says that since the abolition of the French law requiring a license for wine shops, in 1880, the number has increased by 40,000. —At Pittsburg, January 24, a battery of four steel boilers exploded with terrific force, killing one man instantly and fatally injuring several others. The damage is said to exceed $30,000. —Twenty thousand men are now on strike in New York; this number is raised to forty thousand by the strikers on the Brooklyn shores. The men being mostly coal shovellers and freight handlers, it is almost impossible for any of the steamers for Europe or the coast to leave port. —The English Parliament assembled January 27. The speech for the throne caused little interest. Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech giving his reason for withdrawing from the Cabinet. —Near Fort Scott, Kan., January 25, about 200 cases of gunpowder exploded while in transit over the Missouri Pacific Railroad. One brakeman was instantly killed and fifteen cars demolished. —The carmen's strike in San Francisco still continues. The companies are being vigorously boycotted, and the strikers have established a free line of coaches to compete against the boycotted lines. —It is reported that Australia has been swept by a cyclone, accompanied by great rain, resulting in disastrous floods. In the city of Brisbane, Queensland, some of the streets were submerged to a depth of twenty feet, and many persons drowned. —A crusade has been organized by the planters in the Mississippi against agents who have been persuading the negroes to emigrate to the orange country. The negroes are pouring into the Yazoo delta and other lowlands, deserting their employers. —Inyo County, Cal., contains marble deposits of surpassing fineness of quality and wonderful variety. The district is about three miles long. This marble is harder than the Italian, and experts say that the best rock found here will rival the choicest marble of Carrara. —The small and beautiful island of Ninatu, in the South Pacific, has been demolished by a volcano. The once lovely landscape and fertile garden are now a great mass of volcanic rock, covered with ashes and lava. The frightened natives have been transported to another island. —January 24, after a spirited debate, the United States Senate, by a vote of forty-eight to one, passed the bill to authorize the President of the United States to protect and defend the rights of American fishing vessels, American fishermen, American trading and other vessels in certain cases. This bill is a measure of retaliation, and if passed by the House and carried out by the President, will certainly result in a settlement of the fisheries question, either by war or otherwise, as the Dominion and England may elect. MR. GLADSTONE AS HE LOOKS.
By Seth Low
I WAS much interested in the appearance of Mr. Gladstone as he rose to speak. A rather small, worn man he seemed from the visitors' gallery, whose thin gray hair betokened age, but whose active movement as he rose to his feet indicated abundant vigor. With a perfectly quiet manner, but with now and then a graceful gesture, his words came out in smoothly flowing sentences directly to the point. At times with a touch of irony, and often with a quiet humor which never failed of its mark, he showed himself the master of parliamentary fence which all men know him to be. When he sat down it was evident there was nothing left of the motion. Later on in the spring, as the fight waxed harder and heavier against him, he displayed, with all the fire of youth, those wonderful qualities which have made him, even to his contemporaries, a marvel. Men say he never fights better than when the battle is desperate. With a courage born of the most complete conviction that stopped at no risk and no labor, with an alertness that took in the whole field, with an eloquence which dazzled even his enemies, like a very Cœur de Lion he fought, almost single-handed, the unequal fight. At a distance, looking at him, it would seem wholly beyond his physical powers. Close at hand his face is marked, indeed, with the lines and wrinkles of many campaigns, and you see before you still an old man, but you see, also, what at a distance you miss, that the lines are the lines of endurance and hardy strength more than of weakness and old age.—Hon. Seth Low, in Brooklyn Magazine. Howe.—Died in Oakland, Cal., of consumption, Jan. 24, 1887, John Howe, aged 23 years, 3 months, and 9 days. Brother Howe was born in Orange, Ionia Co., Mich., in which State he lived during the greater part of his life. Less than a year ago, in company with his brother, he came to Oakland to work in the office of the Pacific Press; but his health was so poor that he was able to work but a few weeks. In July, 1886, he went to the Health Retreat at St. Helena, and for a time his health seemed to improve; but disease had a firm hold on his entire system, and the improvement was only temporary. At the time of the camp-meeting last fall, there was a spirit of revival in many places in the State, notably at St. Helena, and at that time John found the Saviour. Although he suffered intensely during the latter part of his illness, he made no complaint, and his hope and trust in God were constant. W. Von Benthuysen.—Died at Nevada City, Cal., Jan. 21, 1887, Nina, infant daughter of Henry and Ellen Von Benthuysen, aged almost one year. Funeral services were conducted by Rev. Mr. Angwin (Methodist), who made a few remarks upon 2 Sam. 12:18-23. Mrs. Alice Graham. THE TRUE EDUCATOR.
By Editor
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