(324-325) nine years’ walning, we ought to be able to forestall such a catastrophe. Yet we are stared in the face by the fact that during the last one hundred years the United States has been visited by periodical convulsions of the kind described, at intervals of almost exactly twenty years, with premonitory symptoms of derangement at or about midway intervals. The first real panic in the domestic commercial world in the nineteenth century was in 1814—the outcome of the war of 1812, the exclusion laws and the embargo; the next was in 1837-39, following the United States Bank convulsion, wild-cat banking and speculation in land, with 33,000 resultant failures, more than three times the average annual total today; after that came the big reversal of 1857, consequent on over-expanded banking eredits and tariff legislation; and next, the disturbance of 1873, caused by over-speculation following the civil war; and finally, the most serious panic in our history, in 1893, due to overextended credits in commercial and other lines. Punctuating these five plunges into the region of unreasoning fright there were minor panics: those of 1818, 1826 and of 1829, due to tariff legislation upsetting business; that of 1848, which was a reflection of the disturbed conditions in Europe; one in 1864, which was lost sight of by the turmoil incident to the closing year of the War of the Rebellion; the Eastern commercial and banking credit derangement in 1884, the echo of the Barings’ failure in 1890, and last, but not least, among these disturbances of a so-called minor class, the wrenching liquidation or deferred panic of 1903. This brief review makes it plain that some not well-understood psychological or sociological law has, for a century past, exercised an unerring influence to produce the cycles of prosperity, panic and liquidation which have scared the domestic business world. It likewise emphasizes, in a way that should come hume to every banker and business man, that in 1913 it is certain that the twenty-year variety or major panic will be due. There was not much in the Mississippi or South Sea Bubble enterprises which was not duplieated in kind at least in that which underlay the violent liquidation in prices of securities that so marred the fortunes of millions in the year just elapsed. The theory has grown apace, in view of the liquidation without panic in 1903, that with stronger and bigger banks, chains of banking houses, clearing houses, combinations of industries and mercantile enterprises, panics may be prevented, just as civilization has found panaceas for various ills to which the flesh is heir. But fright, which is the basis of panic, is like a thief in the night. It may seldom be foreseen. No solvent bank or merchant could meet all its or his obligations if asked for peremptorily, at the instant. The undue expansion of credits, by either, in proportion to reserves, in an emergency, is always likely to precipitate a erisis, after which the house of cards falls. The dangers of company promotion, over-capitalization, undue expansion of eredits have been and still are too often overlooked. Nine years is a long while in which to prepare to avoid a given contingency. It also furnishes time in which to grow prosperous and careless, and in which to forget.” * * * The above clipping, we believe, is from The Saturday Evening Post. We print it not for its own sake as an item merely, but also because it so closely coincides with our expectations, based on the divine Word—regarding the ending of “Gentile Times” in October, 1914, when will follow the “time of trouble such as was not sinee there was a nation;”’—the anarchous, period which will in divine providence be followed by the kingdom rule of everlasting righteousness. Our readers will recall that for the past two years we have expressed the opinion that there would not be time for a general panic and its following years of depression and then another gradual rise and another panic before 1914, and that we therefore looked for onlv a temporary lull of the world’s prosperity now (such as is now being experienced) followed by a ZION’S WATCH TOWER ALLEGHENY, Pa period of reasonable prosperity of growing proportions lasting for some years. We advise the consecrated, however, to take heed not to be overcharged by cares of this life and the pursuit of riches. Seek first the kingdom. So long as we can realize ourselves heirs of it we can feel “rich toward God.” “All things are yours, for ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” THE TREASURES OF ETHIOPIA It has long been known that King Menelek of Abyssinia, Africa, claims to be a lineal descendant of Solomon through the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba; but the evidences of this have only recently been discovered by H. LeRoux, a French scientist. LeRoux obtained permission to visit the islands of the Sacred Lake, where he discovered, in a semi-ruined monastery, documents written on ancient paper parchments (papyri) dating back to the time of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon and ascribing to him the paternity of the first King Menelek. Our informant declares that LeRoux is in great favor with the king, or negus, Menelek, and has been granted permission to negotiate the construction of a railroad into Abyssinia and to make further explorations on the islands of that sacred lake, Zonai. These islands, which, until the day when visited by LeRoux, had never been seen save in the distance by any white man, are dotted with ancient monasteries, most of them in ruin, and only a few of them inhabited by ignorant monks, who have no knowledge or power to comprehend the importance of the treasures that are contained within the walls of their abode. For it is known that at the time of the great Mohammedan invasion about 400 years ago, all the sacred relics and the treasures of the nation, all the historical records and, in fact, everything of value, was bundled off to the monasteries on the island of Zonai and concealed there in order to protect them from being carried off and destroyed by the Moslems. It is a matter of tradition in Abyssinia and of belief in the scientific world of Europe that the original Jewish Ark of the Covenant, containing the Mosaical stone of Tables of Law and all the other treasures of the Temple of Solomon, which disappeared from Jerusalem at the time of the so-called Jewish captivity, were despatched by the Jewish high priests for safety to Abyssinia. It is generally believed that the Ark of Covenant, along with all the other relics contained in the holy of holies of the Temple of Solomon, will be found in some of these monastery islands of Lake Zonai. JAPAN AND CHRISTIANITY That the Japanese are not becoming, Christianized but merely civilized, note the views of a Japanese university professor, quoted in the Booklovers’ Magazine as follows:— “Our empire has salted all the seas that have flowed into it. The West cannot hope to Christianize Japan when our ambition is to Japanize Christianity, and to carry the new doctrines, the gospel of rational ethics, to the millions of Asia, and, in time, to all the world. We shall go to China— in fact, we are already there—with a harmonious blending of the best precepts in Buddhism, Confucianism, Bushido, Brahmanism, Herbert Spencer, Christianity and other systems of thought, and we shall, I think nave little trouble in awakening the naturally agnostic mind of the Chinese to the enlightenment of modern free thought. What the Far East needs is a religion as modern as machinery. We have had more gods than were good for us. We believe that a cosmopolitan gospel, tolerating the existence but minimizing the potency of prayers, offerings, shrines, temples, churches, litanies and gods, and dwelling more on the time that now is and the relation of man to man, will create a wonderful reformation in Asia. We confidently believe that it has been assigned to Japan to lead the world in this new intellectual era in the progress of mankind.” PUBLISHING BROTHER RUSSELL’S SERMONS Word has come from many brethren and sisters of their ef:forts to secure the publication of Brother Russell’s Sunday discourses in papers published nearer to them than the Pittsburgh Gazette. Many have sent postal euds to their favorite loval papers, saying that they would gladly subscribe for a year if assured that these sermons would appear regularly and in full. Our advice on the subject might not in every instance be the best: you know some of the conditions better than we do. For instance, the friends near St. Louis may think better of the Republic than of the Democrat; and The Kansas City Star, a weekly; near Chicago the Inter-Ocean may he preferred to the American, ete. Canadian friends assure us that the Toronto Mail and Empire or the Montieal Family Herald would be more likely to publish them than others there. Our gen eral advice is that papers of large circulation and good character be preferred in every case. If you have written a postal card to one paper and it has not responded, it could do no hurt to write similarly to another,—to whichever you prefer. Where papers are obtainable regularly at a news-stand it is not necessary to promise a year’s subscription: it would be enough to say that you would get the papers of your newsdealer and extra copies of those issues containing these discourses. From time to time we will mention the paper proposing the publication of the sermons regularly. Friends in the neighborhood of each journal will, we are sure, be glad in some measure to show their appreciation by patronizing such journals and using among their friends extra copies of the issues containing the sermons In cases where the papers can be purchased ot £3450]
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