A Picture Book for Mothers
By Rev. Joseph F. Flint
BUT this book is not written alone for mothers. Every father, in fact all who have an interest in the welfare of the boys of this nation will find a wealth of help and encouragement in this presentation of the boy question. The author goes to the bottom of things and shows very clearly where the trouble lies if your boy or your neighbor's boy goes wrong.
As the hope of this Republic lies in our boys a careful reading of "The Boy Puzzle" will do much to help solve the difficulties that confront us.
217 Pages, beautifully bound in cloth, post-paid, 75 cents.
Pacific Press Publishing Association
Mountain View, Cal.
Portland, Ore. Regina, Sask., Can. Kansas City, Mo.
Harmful Reading Habits
By Luella B. Priddy
By Mrs. Luella B. Priddy
Reading merely to pass the time is worse than useless. Not only is valuable time wasted, but the mind itself is injured by a careless habit of skimming over page after page, without giving thorough attention to the matter perused. The mind becomes lazy. The reader prefers to read some light literature to engaging in vigorous thinking for himself.
This is one of the harmful effects of novel-reading, but it is not the only one. The mind accustomed to that class of reading-matter which excites the emotions, but which does not incite to right action, develops a visionary individual. He may plan great things, but his plans seldom materialize. There are many people endowed with good intellects, and who have had good educational advantages, who never reach the heights of knowledge or usefulness that they might have reached.
The mind as well as the body needs food. We need to use discrimination as to quality and quantity in selecting our mental as well as our physical food.
The claim is sometimes made that novel-reading is a benefit because of giving an insight into human nature. We might ask the question, Which is the more reliable information,— that which we gain by observing men with whom we come in daily contact, or that which is acquired by a study of fictitious characters which may be more or less untrue to life, and are frequently examples of depravity? Undoubtedly the former.
But it is often contended that the reading of such literature develops the imagination. This is probably true; but to develop the imagination in such channels can not benefit the individual. The imagination makes the unseen appear real. If one reads the description of real persons and places, and of the glories that await the redeemed, he will find ample scope for the imagination in legitimate channels.
The reading of fictitious literature is a detriment to the Christian experience of those who would lead the divine life. The reader often has his feelings moved by that which he knows is not true. When the story is finished, the matter drops from his mind. When the heart is stirred by a presentation of its sinfulness, the emotions subside, the sense of reality slips away, and there is no serious amendment of life.
Exciting literature does not lead to a love for the good old Book. A young woman who had become much addicted to the habit of reading novels, desired to become a Christian, to abandon this evil habit, and instead, to read her Bible; but she could not interest herself in the Sacred Volume. Its sublime language had no charm for her. When she attempted to read it, her mind wandered to other things. She felt grieved and condemned, but knew not what to do. A neighbor read to her, and led her to look to the sinner’s Friend, who is ever ready to help the helpless back to the safe path.
The world is flooded with evil literature. “Give me the daily that gives the fullest account of the —— murder case,” said a man as he stepped into a news stand. His mind had fed upon exciting and horrible things until he was eager for his mental stimulant, just as the liquor drinker craves his glass when he begins to feel the lassitude and depression that result from his last indulgence.
Parents, be careful what mental food is placed before your children. Tales of ghosts and goblins, murder and rapine, will have their baleful effect. The reading-table may be a stepping-stone to the heights of wisdom; or it may be a weight to drag those who sit beneath its lamp, down to the regions of darkness.
The inexperienced feet of childhood and youth need wise guides to lead them along the path of knowledge. Good literature is one of the most important means of acquiring knowledge. In our reading there should be a definite end in view. It is impossible to read everything. We should select that which will make us wiser and more useful, that which will aid us in the preservation and restoration of health, and that which will point the soul heavenward. Do not neglect the Bible. It is the torch that lights the misty past, the lamp that guides our feet along the slippery paths of life, and the beacon that illuminates the future.
“Give attendance to reading,” says the Inspired Volume. 1 Tim. 4:13. Nehemiah tells us how they read in his day: “So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” Neh. 8:8.
To become a good reader requires practice. Gather the family around the evening lamp, and read aloud from some good book or paper. With a dictionary and other helps at hand, let some one look up every word and statement that is not understood. Discuss the subject that has been read. It will drive out gossip and foolish jesting.
Make the reading hour so pleasant that the children will not care to slip around the corner to read trash with evil companions. It will be a golden chain to bind parents and children together in one common interest. It will make home better, purer, and happier.
Pure Air and Correct Breathing—Their Value
By D. H. Kress
By D. H. Kress, M.D., Director of Washington (D. C.) Sanitarium
II. How to Ventilate
THE time was when people worked in the field, and slept in rudely constructed homes through which daylight and air were admitted on all sides. Very little thought needed to be given to purity of air. But since this rural life has been exchanged for city life, and work in the field for office work, and the loosely thrown together hut for the modern air-proof dwelling, some plans have to be developed whereby the foul air may be diluted and removed, and pure air admitted. An opening at the top of a window directed toward the ceiling, and an open fireplace, form a splendid ventilating system. If a stove is in the room, by running a pipe containing a damper, from the elbow at the back of the stove to within three or four inches of the floor, the outlet of impure air can be regulated. This is the best ventilating system for the ordinary living-room. The cool air is at the top while the warm, impure air is drawn up the chimney.
To supply the same quality of air in the inside of these dwellings that is found on the outside is impossible, since it would require a complete change of the air four or five times every minute. Therefore house dwellers, even where they have the best known system of ventilation, must be content with air that has in it some impurities not found in out-of-door air. For inside air we are forced to adopt a different standard of purity than for out-of-door air. As far as possible, therefore, it is well to live out-of-doors.
The beneficial effect of light and pure air may be witnessed by exposing to them bedding containing impurities. How sweet the bedding is at night after such exposure during the day. Sunlight and air have the same beneficial influence on the human body. The organic impurities which are constantly forming in the body and oozing through the pores of the skin, in the absence of light and air undergo putrefactive changes, and develop foul and offensive products, which when reabsorbed or inhaled produce disease. The body needs exposure to pure air in order to be kept sweet and clean.
There are those who religiously exclude15the night air from bedrooms, believing it to be harmful. Night air is the only kind of air we have to breathe at night. It is only a question of whether we will open our windows, and breathe the pure night air, or keep them closed, and breathe impure night air.
In order to keep the air in rooms as pure as possible, it is necessary to have more than one opening. There should be an inlet for the pure air, and an outlet for impure air, in every ventilating system. These openings should be as nearly opposite each other as possible. The air must be kept circulating. Unless this is done, the air surrounding the body soon becomes so thoroughly impregnated with impurities that it becomes dangerous to health. Sleeping in rooms in which the air stagnates is responsible for the lack of ambition, and the good-for-nothing feeling, frequently experienced early in the morning, and which call for the morning narcotics. Infants are often injured by sleeping in closed rooms with tobacco-using parents. Many an infant's life has been sacrificed in this way.
Impure air not only injures health, but dulls the mind; it makes less acute the judgment and the ability to discriminate between right and wrong. It dampens the vital fires, and decreases energy. No one can be what God designed him to be physically, intellectually, or morally, who is content to dwell in poorly ventilated rooms, and breathe impure air.
He Careth
WHAT can it mean? Is it aught to Him
That the nights are long and the days are dim?
Can He be touched by the griefs I bear,
Which sadden the heart and whiten the hair?
Around His throne are eternal calms,
And strong, glad music of happy psalms,
And bliss, unruffled by any strife—
How can He care for my little life?
And yet I want Him to care for me,
While I live in this world where the shadows be;
When the lights die down from the path I take,
When the strength is feeble and friends forsake,
When love and music that once did bless
Have left me to silence and loneliness,
And my life song changes to sobbing prayers,
Then my heart cries out for a God who cares!
O wonderful story of deathless love!
Each child is dear to the heart above.
He fights for me when I can not fight;
He comforts me in the gloom of night;
He lifts the burden, for He is strong;
He stills the sigh and awakes the song;
The sorrow that bowed me down, He bears,
And loves and pardons, because He cares!
— Author Unknown.
Not Amputation nor Pneumonia, but Rum
By John G. Woolley
I was at a hospital when an ambulance came tearing at the door, with a man whose leg was crushed from mid-thigh down. He was placed upon the operating table, restless and moaning. "O doctor," he said, "will it kill me?" and the good, blunt man of science answered, "No, not the leg; but the beer may do you up." And it did. The limb was removed quickly and skilfully, but the clean aseptic cut had really no chance to heal, because the general physical degradation of beer no surgeon's knife can amputate. When life and death grip one another, beer stabs life in the back.
A friend of mine was taken with pneumonia. He was a splendid specimen of physical manhood, forty-six inches chest measure, and set up like a Greek god. To the amazement of his friends, he died in the first onslaught of the disease. The comment of the doctor, whom I knew very well — his comment in private — was curt, but eloquent: "You can't bank on a fine physique when pneumonia grips a drinker. When life and death meet in a tug of war, drink takes the graveyard end of the rope." The liquor traffic is against the safety of the people, tried by these tests. — John G. Woolley.
Good Homes for Sale
Two good farms for sale in a rich section of the Northwest adjoining the new Cedar Vale Academy, conducted under the auspices of the Upper Columbia Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists. May be exchanged for city or suburban property in California. Prices and terms reasonable. For further information, address J. W. Shields, Viola, Idaho.
Notice
THE next class in the St. Helena Sanitarium and Hospital Training School for medical missionary nurses will be organized Monday, April 4, 1910.
Owing to the large number and great variety of cases that flock to this institution for relief, and the wide experience thus offered the students both in surgical and general hospital nursing, the course is especially strong from a practical missionary standpoint. In addition to the opportunities for missionary work at the sanitarium, the San Francisco Dispensary, which the institution has taken over, affords training in city mission work. The institution has also undertaken to open up mission work in China the present year, thus giving those who desire, a definite foreign mission field for which to prepare and upon which to enter when their course is completed.
Twenty-five consecrated young men and women, whose desire it is to enter the work for the sake of fallen humanity and not for profit, are wanted to join this class.
There are also classes in Bible, history, and music for the regular workers.
Send for the training school catalog by addressing: Dr. H. F. Rand, superintendent, or Mrs. S. J. Whitney, secretary, Sanitarium, Napa County, Cal.
Help Wanted at Once
At the new vegetarian cafeteria which will be started soon. Ten young ladies for general work, two lady cashiers, one lady bookkeeper and stenographer, two young men for dining-room, two men to wash dishes, etc. Good home, good wages, and steady work to right parties.
Write at once to E. G. Fulton, 257 So. Hill St., Los Angeles, Cal.
Life and Health
A PRACTICAL health journal, published with a view of meeting hygienic needs in every home; teaching how to care for the health and how to preserve life; prescribing simple home treatments to assist nature in throwing off diseases rather than adding more poison by using drugs or unnatural stimulants as remedies; teaching how to avoid disease as far as possible, how to manage in the home when sickness does come, and how to combat the disease by simple remedies which nature provides.
Send for sample copy and special rates to agents. Price 10 cents per copy or $1.00 per year.
Address, LIFE & HEALTH, Takoma Park, D.C.
LIBERTY
By Editor
THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF
THE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY BUREAU
An illustrated, 48-page, quarterly magazine, published as an exponent and advocate of true religious liberty; defending Christianity and the rights of conscience; upholding the Bible as the infallible word of God; recognizing the church and state as ordained of Heaven for specific and distinct purposes, but vigorously protesting against the alliance of the church with the state in the attempt to advance religion and to promote the state.
Price 25 cents per year. Liberal terms to agents.
Address, LIBERTY, Takoma Park, D. C.
Our Little Friend
An Illustrated Paper for the Smaller Men and Women, for the Children and Little Ones
Instructive and entertaining, clean, wholesome, sensible. It is a character builder, a helper to father and mother. Our Little Friend would plant seed in the joyous life of the children in the Present, that it may bear blessed fruitage in the Harvest of the Future. Respect your child's individuality. Take the paper for him or her. Only 60 cents a year.
Address, OUR LITTLE FRIENDMountain View, Cal.
Christ’s Coming and the End
An exposition, verse by verse, of one of the most striking chapters in the New Testament; covering our Lord's great discourse on the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the world, and the special signs of His second coming to reward His children. The facts of fulfilment given make this pamphlet worth many times its price. 94 pages, price 10c.
Uncle Ben's Cobblestones
Familiar Talks with Boys and Girls About Common Things ❧
UNCLE BEN has such a pleasing way of telling about the origin and use of common, every-day articles, that he holds the interest of the reader from the start in his talks about air, water, sunshine, fire, smoke, glass, coal, salt, paper, matches, etc.
He tells about more than one hundred different things in all, and intersperses with many happy thoughts that bring good cheer to young and old.
Two hundred and twenty-one pages, nicely bound. Price, post-paid, $1.00.
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Pacific Press Publishing Assn.
Mountain View, California
Portland, Ore. Regina, Sask., Can. Kansas City, Mo.
The Two-Horned Beast
By Editor
This issue is quite thoroly filled with the discussion of the symbol of the two-horned beast of Revelation 13. We hope it will be faithfully studied. If any of our readers see reason against the application we are making of it, we shall be glad to hear from them. There is very much more which might be said upon the subject.
The annual meeting of the Pacific Press Publishing Association was held according to law, January 24, at Mountain View. We have not space in this number to note more than the fact of the meeting and one or two items which will be of interest to our readers. More will be given in our next issue. We were glad to greet so many of our members and friends from different parts of the state, and to mark the interest that was manifest in the meeting. Resolutions were passed, the substance of which we will give later. The Board of Directors elected for the next year are as follows: H. W. Cottrell, C. H. Jones, H. G. Childs, H. H. Hall, R. A. Underwood, E. T. Russell, C. W. Flaiz, E. E. Andross, M. C. Wilcox, W. M. Healey, George A. Snyder, B. R. Nordyke, J. O. Corliss. This gives a Board of thirteen, in harmony with the action taken last year, instead of seven; scattering it pretty well over the book territory controlled by the Pacific Press.
Our next week's issue will consider the mark of the beast, and its enforcement. One of the most solemn warnings of God's Word is against the worship of the beast, and the reception of his mark. One of the most awful penalties mentioned in the whole Word is against those who are receiving the warning as recorded in the 14th chapter of Revelation. What this means will be told to our readers next week. This will not be all the number will contain, however. There will be many other things of deep importance connected with it.
We were glad to greet at our annual meeting, Elder J. N. Loughborough, one of the aged men connected with this message, and one who has been preaching it for more than fifty years. Altho now nearly 78 years of age, he is in remarkably good health and spirits. About two years ago he began a journey around the world, leaving San Francisco for Australia, and returning by way of Europe and New York, visiting South Africa and other countries en route. He has traveled 47,500 miles, 30,000 of which were by sea. During all this time he has never been seasick. He has attended on his trip 580 meetings, at 358 of which he spoke; and he returns in better health than when he left home. We hope that his life may be spared for many years yet.
The Nature of the Sabbath
It is not for the mere resting upon the seventh day that we contend. It is not to lead men to refrain from physical labor on that day that we labor. This is not the Sabbath-keeping required of God. If this were all, civil laws might suffice, and compulsory observance might be beneficial. But this is not the requirement; it is not the essential idea of the requirement. God says, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." He who does not keep it holy does not keep it at all.
He who is not holy can not keep the Sabbath. Man can be made holy only in Jesus Christ, and that by faith. Jesus Christ in the holy Sabbath, and Jesus Christ in the heart wholly given to Him, find sweet concord, and the Sabbath is hailed as "a delight," and "honorable." Isa. 58:13. He who knows Christ, knows the works of Christ in him; and he who knows His works, knows His rest, twice blessed in the Sabbath.
This is the nature of true Sabbath-keeping. It is to call men to the knowledge of this blessing that we labor. "Blessed is the man that doeth this; . . . that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil."
There has just concluded in our home church a series of studies on Religious Liberty conducted by Elders Cottrell, Corliss, and Healey. These have been of great interest and very instructive. Altho the weather has been inexpressibly bad, the attendance has been good. The great principles of the equality of men by right before the civil law, God's regard for the rights of all men, have been set forth very clearly and strongly. We believe that good only can come out of it.
Just as we close the forms of this number the Pacific Union Conference, including in its territory the state conferences of California, Southern California, Utah, and Arizona, is opening in Mountain View, with a good attendance of delegates from all parts of the field. It bids fair to be one of great interest.
Regarding wireless telephony it is said that the record is held by Lieutenant-major Orana of the Italian navy. He has spoken 250 miles.
Help One Another.—The apostle's exhortation to his brethren is, "Edify one another, even as also ye do." The better English of the first phrase is, "Build up one another," or, "Build one another up." It is sad, but human beings many times are engaged, and often professed Christians, in tearing one another down. The Christian way is to build one another up. Here is unbounded room for holy temples in God's kingdom. There is no need of strife or emulation among His children. If He in His wisdom does not want us in one place, if we are truly His, He has a better place for us. But wherever we are placed, let us "edify one another." Thus only can we be truly built into that temple of which Jesus Christ is the corner-stone.
It has been said by some that hypnotism could not suggest criminality unless the one hypnotized was naturally a criminal. A Swiss girl, however, recently brought before a London magistrate, made the plea for her defense that she was hypnotized by another woman. The magistrate took this into account and released the accused on trial. She was a governess by profession, and is said to be of a timid disposition, and one easily influenced by a stronger mind.
The council of the Publishers' Association in England approves of the aim of the Circulating Library's Association in shutting out from circulation as far as possible all indecent publications, or publications that tend to degradation. The Society of Authors of the same country points out that the "circulating libraries" can do more in this way than any other agency, because they are the ones who select the books offered to their readers. England is much more careful in this respect than America, but publications of a base character have been multiplying during the past few years.
"Attenuate and Weaken."—The Messiah's Advocate, referring to "conditional immortality," a doctrine held by most Adventists, well says that "the teaching that the spirit of man is an entity and exists as such apart from the body, is a fundamental departure from Adventual and therefore Biblical teaching, and logically fatal to the doctrine of man's present entire mortality, and therefore a compromise with error which will greatly attenuate and weaken the delivery of the advent message."
A Great Newspaper.—The Los Angeles Times of January 1 is at hand. It is the annual issue for Southern California, which the Times has been one of the chief agents in developing. This issue, of what would be equal to 248 pages, is certainly a great number. It is well written, well arranged, and well illustrated in black and white, with some fine color designs. And after reading it, one must conclude that Southern California is a great country of itself. Why should not Christians be as zealous in advertising the good things of the heavenly land?
The Christmas issue of the San Francisco News-Letter contains a large number of special photo-engravings which splendidly illustrate the progress made in the building of that city by the Golden Gate since the earthquake and fire. The city has made astonishing advance. Would that she had advanced morally also. The price of the News-Letter number is 25 cents.
Belgium officials declare that there is better rule promised for the Kongo, and they feel sore because criticism of the Kongo State government is still kept up. Surely every one who does not delight in cruelty, will be glad that the fearful regime of the late King Leopold is over in Kongo.
Bread the Cause.—Dr. J. W. Stagg, president of the Alabama Presbyterian College, a noted scholar, declares that bread will be the cause of the next revolution, and that that revolution will be sure to come within the next few years unless there is an exodus from city to country.
