NEWSPAPER LIBEL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 12, 15 January 1909, Page 7

NEWSPAPER LIBEL.

« AN EDITOR AWARDED DAMAGES.By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright. (Received January 15, 9 a.m.) LONDON, 14th January. The Rev. M. Baxter, the prophetic oditor of the Christian Herald, was awarded £500 damages for libel from the newspaper Mint for describing him as a charlatan. The Rev. M. Baxter is not only a prophet, but the son of a prophet, and perhaps the most sensational of living apocalyptic "interpreters." His father, who died a few years ago, was tor n, time identified with the movement associated with the Rev. Edward Irving, and made some astounding predictions, including one of a dreadful war between Britain and the United States, Avhich was speedily falsified. Having thus grievously discredited the Irvingite movement, he withdrew from it, and was thenceforth one of its most active opponents. Mr. Baxter, who has attained an advanced age, oegan the publication of startling prophetic books in the. "sixties." One ot thess was called " Coming Wonders," and another " Napoleon, the Destined Monarch of the World." Napoleon 111. was represented as " Antichrist," " The Beast," etc., and the destruction of the world was speedily to be accomplished. Mr. Baxter has many times since predicted the end of the world, giving most precise dates, and time has repeatedly falsified his calculations. A few years ago he set up the date to the hour and minute ("'Greenwich time") — but the date is past, and he prophecies still. In his lectures he shows amazing pictures of plague and carnage, and gruesome compound monsters supposed to represent the "beasts" of the Apocalypse. Sometimes he is confronted in public with one of his old books, and asked if his present-day predictions ara any sounder than those of die sixties. Naturally the press does not usually take him very seriously.