On sale every day, from February 15 to April 7, from all eastern points. Following are a few:
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Bloomington, $32.00
Peoria, $31.00
St. Louis, $30.00
Cairo, Memphis, and New Orleans, $31.65
Kansas City and Leavenworth, $25.00
St. Joseph, Atchison, Council Bluffs, $25.00
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Oklahoma and Indian Territory, $25.00
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New York, $50.00
Santa Fe Agents will take deposits of money to cover price of tickets, which will be promptly furnished to passengers at any point.
TICKET OFFICES
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Also any Santa Fe Agent.
OUR WORK AND WORKERS.
By Editor
IT has been decided by the Ontario Conference Committee to man two tents the present season.
IN the Southwestern Union Record, Brother D. U. Hale reports the baptism of five candidates at Nocona, Texas.
AS a result of a young people's convention at St. Charles, Mich., a young people's society of thirty-seven members has been organized.
WHILE the Seventh-day Adventists are comparatively few in number, no denomination of Christians is more in touch with all the world. Eighteen new foreign doors were opened during the year 1905.
THE Southern Illinois Herald notes the organization of a church at Urbana, Ill. Twenty-four members united. The services were conducted by Brother W. D. Parkhurst, president of the conference.
Brother Wm. O. Perry, of 1601 Grand Avenue, Tampa, Fla., desires to thank those who so liberally responded to his call for papers for missionary work. He acknowledges receipt of Signs, Review, and Watchman.
IN Eastern Tidings we notice this item: "We have just received word that Dr. Marsh and a nurse will soon arrive in Bombay. This is cheering news, as we are in need of just such help to open the medical work in that city."
AT an annual gathering of the W. C. T. U., held in Mountain View, the home of the Signs, on March 28, the evening program was given over to the Seventh-day Adventists. The exercises were highly commended. The Methodist minister, Rev. Mr. Orr, was also called upon for remarks, and responded briefly.
WRITING from Cove Creek, N. C., to the Wisconsin Reporter, Brother George Crawford says: "A man who publicly abused me two years ago for teaching as I did, now openly acknowledges the Sabbath and says he will keep it." The great "apostle to the Gentiles" was a man who had previously abused the disciples of Christ, publicly and in every way. The conversion of such men is a manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit. The final conversion of enemies of the truth depends largely upon patient endurance of abuse by those disciples who are subjected to it.
THE Life Boat for April is a Special Prisoners' Number. It is filled with excellent matter, including articles from a number of leading workers in the cause of Christian benevolence. The price of the journal is now 50 cents a year, monthly; single copy, 5 cents; in lots of 100 or more, 2 cents per copy; in lots less than 100, 2½ cents. Address, Life Boat, Hinsdale, Ill. A prisoner converted through the Life Boat mission work writes to the editor that he is now working for a firm in Colorado at a good salary, with the privilege of keeping the Sabbath of the Lord.
WANTED FOR MISSIONARY WORK.
(Always prepay postage.)
ANY of our periodicals and tracts, as early as convenient. Address, John R. Reid, 1311 N. 10th Street, Tacoma, Wash.
IMPORTANT TO TRAVELERS
The WASHINGTON-SUNSET ROUTE announce the opening of their through line via New Orleans. Personally conducted cars, San Francisco to Washington, D. C., via Coast Line and Los Angeles, tri-weekly. Tickets at lowest rates to Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, New England, and all Eastern points. Through the Old South. Quick time. Best service. Write Phil K. Gordon, 633 Market St., San Francisco, for full information.
Millennial Text-Book
MILLENNIAL TEXT-BOOK.—Every known reference, over 500 arranged according to events, adapted for instant reference or profound Bible study; result of 12 years' search. Mailed for 10 one-cent stamps, or a dime. Eugene A. Brown, Phoenix, Ariz.
SOUVENIR POST-CARDS
Feast of All Saints, Binangonan, Philippine Islands, Feb. 11th to 13th, 1901.
These views are principally of arches, erected in honor of the "Feast of All Saints," held at Binangonan, Province of Morong.
All of these arches are constructed of bamboo and trimmed with paper, muslin, or anything that could be found for a trimming; the net-work seen in some of them, was bamboo split fine and woven similar to cane. Set of six, 15 cents.
PAUL MUSIC COMPANY, DEPT. L.
245 CALIFORNIA AVE., PROVIDENCE, R. I.
"COTTON OR PIG?"
A valuable booklet to all interested in good health from pure food. FREE on request—or better still, send 10 cents in stamps to pay postage, and we will mail you sample of the modern COOKING OIL.
A good baker. One who is a good bread-maker. About April 1st. Wages $12.00 to $14.00 per week if his work is satisfactory. Call or address,
M. J. Allen, Manager, Vegetarian Cafe,
259 S. Hill St., Los Angeles, Cal.
MUSTACHE GUARD
Fits any drinking vessel and converts it into a mustache cup. Made of Wessel silver. Guaranteed not to change color. Sent to any address for inspection. If it suits you, send 30 cents. If you don't want it, return it. The retail price is 50 cents. The reduced price is just to introduce it. Order quickly. Alfred Mallet, Elkbridge Sta., Baltimore, Md.
Devotional Songs
One-half new songs that will never grow old
One-half old songs that will always be new
Devotional Songs
250 pages, cloth, $25.00 per 100; 30 cents each by mail.
A copy for examination will be mailed on request. Returnable. Published by the publishers of the famous "Gospel Hymns."
THE BIGLOW & MAIN Co., New York and Chicago
The Iowa Sanitarium Bakery
is prepared to fill all orders with first-class goods. Liberal discounts. Write for price-list.
Address Iowa Sanitarium Bakery,
Des Moines, Iowa.
THE NORTHWESTERN LINE
RUSSIA-JAPAN ATLAS.
Send ten cents in stamps to R. R. Ritchie, No. 617 Market Street, San Francisco, for Russo-Japanese War Atlas, issued by the Chicago & Northwestern Railway, three fine colored maps each 14x20, bound in convenient form for reference. The Eastern Situation shown in detail with tables showing relative military and naval strength and financial resources of Russia and Japan.
THE GLORY OF THE HEAVENS.
By Garrett P. Servis
[Garrett P. Servis, in the Examiner.]
A FEW evenings since, I was watching with a friend the matchless spectacle of Orion advancing to the meridian, when my companion suddenly turned to me and remarked:
"Is there not some vast mystery concealed in that part of the heavens? To me, at least, it seems so, for I can never shake off the impression that the creative power which made the universe lavished its richest gifts upon the locality in and surrounding Orion."
The same thought has doubtless occurred to hundreds of others while gazing upon that star-bedight region. The heavens are not everywhere alike, any more than is the face of the earth. One of the greatest charms that draws the star-gazer to his nightly entertainment is the astonishing diversity of the views in various directions.
On earth we do not find diamonds or rubies in all countries. They are confined to certain localities, such as the diamond fields of South Africa and the gravels of Burmah. In a similar way there are particular localities in space where not only do specially brilliant stars throng together, but where those stars possess peculiarities of their own which serve to rank them by themselves.
The region about Orion is, perhaps, the most wonderful of these apparently favored places. Spectroscopic analysis, as well as the general appearance of the lucid stars in that part of the sky, warrants their being thus set apart under the specific denomination of "the Orion stars."
One may easily imagine that the creative forces found there a more generous supply of materials to work upon. It is the part of the visible universe to which one would most willingly pay a visit, if human personality could quit this little earth, just as we are drawn to that side of a garden where the magnificence of the flowers shows that the soil is richer and its products more abundant and splendid than elsewhere.
The Constellation of Orion.
This be-gemmed portion of the sky is roughly delimited by seven or eight of the finest stars in the heavens, all of the first magnitude, and marking the corners of an immense irregular hexagon, with Orion situated not far from its center.
It is a spectacle well worth looking at, and one that requires the use of no optical instrument whatever.
The northernmost point of the great hexagon is indicated by the beautiful milk-white star Capella in the constellation Auriga. At the northwest corner shines the rose-red Aldebaran, in the Hyades, on the forehead of Taurus. The southwest corner is illuminated by Rigel, the gleaming white star in the foot of Orion. Then, over in the southeast blazes and scintillates the imperial Sirius. Above Sirius is Procyon, slightly yellowish white, and above Procyon, at the northeast corner, are the Twins, Castor and Pollux, which, altho individually inferior in brightness to the others, reinforce one another by their appearance of companionship. Not far from the center of the hexagon shines the orange-colored star Betelgeuse, in Orion's shoulder, and below that, in the direction of Rigel, appears the row of three equal stars in Orion's belt, as attractive to the eye as so many brilliant diamonds set at regular distances apart upon the golden bar of a brooch.
Photography has shown that the middle portion of this region, including the whole constellation of Orion, is enmeshed with mysterious loops and laces of nebulous cloud. For the possessor of a telescope, there is here intellectual entertainment for many an evening, while those who look with the naked eye alone, find the display magnificent beyond description. There is not one of the great stars that have just been named that is not incomparably mightier than our sun. It is an education to gaze and meditate upon that Golconda of the heavens.
KEEP A-GOING.
By Benjamin Keech
Tho you're very, very blue,
And there's not a joy in view—
Keep a-going.
Tho at present you may sigh
For a grave in which to lie,—
Keep a-going.
Dead men have no chance to work
In this bad old world. Why shirk?
Devils round the idle lurk—
Keep a-going.
Tho you toil from day to day
With no brightness in your way,—
Keep a-going.
Tho there's naught to make you glad,
And you're weak, and sick, and sad,—
Keep a-going.
Tho your heart's as cold as ice,
Love will make it warm and nice;
Let this, then, your case suffice—
Keep a-going.
Every word of hope you say
Cheers some traveler on his way—
Keep a-going.
Every decent deed you do,
Helps some mortal to be true—
Keep a-going.
Don't give up. Some other's fall
May rest on you if you call
This life vain. Help counts, tho small—
Keep a-going.
Sometime, in the days to come,
Men shall say of you, "Well done"—
Keep a-going.
They will give the praise that they
Do withhold from you to-day—
Keep a-going.
Then, in Honor's steady light,
You will see it pays to fight
For the cause that's good and right—
Keep a-going.
BENJAMIN KEECH.
A BIG, LITTLE STATE.
BETWEEN the Denmark of which the old King Christian IX. became ruler in 1863, and the Denmark of which his son Frederick VIII. takes the crown, there is a vast difference. At the very beginning of his reign King Christian saw himself stripped of half his realm by Prussia's seizure of the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg. Denmark profited by the experience.
Nature gave the tiny kingdom, which is less than twice as large as New Jersey, a dominant position at the mouth of the Baltic. Both Germany and Russia, with their ambitious schemes of naval expansion, have had good cause to covet the Danish coign of vantage.
But the best defense of Denmark has been abstinence from world politics and consistent neutrality. While Germany has gone on burdening its people with excessive taxes to build up a tremendous military machine, little Denmark's army amounts to hardly more than a police force. For each square mile of Germany Kaiser Wilhelm has kept three soldiers under arms, to say nothing of a costly navy. For each square mile of Denmark King Christian has less than one soldier.
The Danes have chosen to work for their own welfare by minding their own business. All told they number about 2,500,000 souls, about the population of Manhattan and the Bronx. Germany has made phenomenal progress in industry and trade, yet with all her vast resources she buys and sells nearly one-third less in the world's markets, man for man, than Denmark.
Nowhere in Europe has agriculture been put upon a more scientific basis than in the narrow peninsula. About two-thirds of the entire population live by farming. Danish butter is not only England's chief supply—it circumnavigates the globe in tin; 125,000,000 pounds are sent abroad every year.
It is a state too little studied by its bigger competitors. A people essentially democratic in spirit, abolished its nobility half a century ago, while retaining for convenience the forms of a constitutional monarchy. Education, but not military service, has long been universal and compulsory. The proportion of illiteracy is small, as is that of pauperism. The Danes have prospered even in greater measure than the people of other small states like Holland and Switzerland. Their wealth has been in strength of character, not in bigness.—Selected.
MAKE YOUR HOME HAPPY.
LET home stand first before all other things. No matter how high your ambition may transcend its duties, no matter how far your talents or your influence may reach beyond its doors, before everything else build up a true home. Be not its slave; be its minister. Let it not be enough that it is swept and garnished; that its food is delicious; but feed the love in it, feed the truth in it, feed thought and aspiration, feed all charity and gentleness in it. Then from its walls shall come forth the true woman and the true man, who shall together rule and bless the land.—Selected.
Japan Appeals to Generous America
By Editor
OVER A MILLION IN THE NORTHERN PROVINCES, FACING STARVATION, CRY FOR HELP — WILL YOU HELP THEM?
Many Perishing from Hunger and Cold
Latest advices from the famine fields of Japan give a most harrowing picture of the present condition of the sufferers in that section.
The rigorous winter set in much earlier, in real earnest, and will stay very much longer. At present, thousands of children and aged folk are face to face with biting cold and the cruel pangs of hunger. The scene is harrowing enough even to imagine, but it is long-drawn, miserable death to many of the actors who experience its misery. To aggravate the misfortunes of the sufferers, the intense cold and the deep snows that cover the land, make it impossible for them to get even fern roots and bark of trees and shrubs for food any longer, and many poor people, after enduring the cruel attacks of hunger, have been starved to death.
Whatever is done to help these people must be done quickly, in order to be available.
AN OLDER SISTER
The response is generous, but the magnitude of the need to be filled is greater still. Let us, to whom hunger is but a name, concentrate in a common impulse to send food where starvation's gnawing grip has become an awful daily reality—where fathers and mothers are helplessly watching their children waste away before their eyes, and where wives and daughters, who have so lately laid their all upon the altar of their country's honor, are now facing a more appalling fate than death upon the battlefield.
A Missionary Story
Mrs. Gurney Binford, a devoted missionary of the Friends' persuasion, relates in simple language a tragedy more thrilling than any of fiction or drama, which has just taken place before her eyes, but of which she learned too late to be of service. In a district near her there lived an honest, industrious farmer, who, with his family, were brought to the last extremity. Everything had gone to procure the pittance which would keep them together for one more day, and at last the father said, "We have never begged—we cannot now. We must die of starvation here—there is no hope for us." So he traveled wearily up the hill, his wife and two children by his side, and together they flung themselves from a cliff, at the base of which their dead bodies were afterwards discovered.
Mrs. Binford adds: "There are so many, many suicides. The real Japanese war is only just beginning; there are so many widows and orphans, so many maimed and disabled soldiers who are fighting the grim enemy, Starvation. Yes, the war is only beginning."
Relief Work Progressing
The methods employed by the Japanese for distributing relief are exceptionally efficient. As the result of the sympathetic and helpful attitude of the officials, not one sen of this money will be spent in administration. The whole will be used in buying food. In no case will money be given. The money goes to the heads of the counties. There it is again divided in proportion to the need, and sent to the heads in the different towns and villages of the county. They in turn buy food for the amount, and give it to the sufferers in daily portions. We know that the authorities in the three afflicted prefectures are doing all in their power. Only let them at once have money or food, for it is only too certain that unless some great beneficent influence intervenes, the death-roll from hunger and cold in the next three months will shock the world.
Can we sleep on peaceful pillows,
When the light of day has fled,
While across Pacific's billows,
Tens of thousands starve for bread?
Pitying hearts that throb with sorrow,
By your deeds ye shall be known,
Give to-day, and ere to-morrow,
'Twill be carved on God's white throne.
The President Appeals
So ominous is the outlook, that President Roosevelt has been moved to address an appeal to the American people in behalf of the suffering nation, in which he says:
"The famine situation in northern Japan is proving much more serious than at first supposed, and thousands of persons are on the verge of starvation. It is a calamity such as may occasionally befall any nation. Nations, like men, should stand ever ready to aid each other in distress, and I appeal to the American people to help from their abundance their suffering fellow-men of the great and friendly nation of Japan."
Come, be a Burden-Bearer
Help us feed Japan's starving poor! It is an invitation to sit in the highest room, nearest to the Giver of the feast, Himself the Chief of burden-bearers. We have no fear but that the help will come in abundant measure, but it is difficult to present with sufficient strength the need for haste. The agony of starvation has begun—is now in existence! Who will stem this life-destroying tide? If you have not much, "Help just a little." If you have more, give of what you have.
A Prayer for the Starving
The Christian residents of Japan, both natives and foreigners, are wrought to keen and widespread sympathy with the desperate straits of the people of the famine-stricken section. An expression of their fervid interest is conveyed in the form of prayer appointed by the Protestant Episcopal bishop of Japan for daily use during the famine, inspiring all to self-denial and the ministry of service:
Happy Japanese Children Before the Famine Came
"Almighty and merciful God, Maker and Father of all men, upon whom the eyes of all do wait that thou mayest give them their meat in due season; look with pity, we pray thee, upon thy children in this land who are perishing from hunger. Fill us with compassion for the suffering that we may abound in sympathy and kindness. Make us willing to deny ourselves that they may be fed. Help us to bear the burdens of the weak, and to minister to the wants of all. Grant that this mind may be in us which was also in Christ Jesus, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister. Save us from pride and selfishness, and fill us with consideration and humility, for the sake of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."
If We Hesitate, They are Lost
There are those to whom the miseries of the world are misery, and will not let them rest.
Thank God that this is true! Already the big American heart has guided the willing hand to the purse-strings, and contributions have begun to pour in from every quarter, sent us by many who never rest when the "miseries of the world" are brought before them. We have no fear but that the help so desperately needed will come, in Scripture measure—"pressed down and running over," but it is difficult for us to grasp the urgent need of quick action. We must stem the tide with an almost feverish haste, or thousands—yes, tens of thousands—will be swept away by the overwhelming flood ere we can stretch a hand to save them.
Think, think of mothers bound to the little ones they bore, by cords of love just as strong and undying as yours, who, to-day, this moment, heedless of the clutching grip of hunger tearing at their own vitals, are hopelessly and helplessly watching the bright, beautiful hopes of their poor, narrow lives, starve to death before their haggard eyes. "That love has a broken wing which cannot fly across the ocean." Send yours forth upon strong pinions to enfold within its shelter the shrunken baby form over which some other mother yonder is bending with breaking heart! Live as long as you may, you will never lose the blessing which will come to you according to His promise.
A JAPANESE MOTHER
The Daughters of the King
There are in every community godly women, sympathetic and kind; consecrated women, who long to do good, as they have opportunity, and to aid the poor, the suffering and the distressed. We look confidently to them for aid at this time. They can work, they can speak, they can plead, pray and give. May God call them to this mission and graciously prosper the work of their hearts and their hands.
The Ministry of Service
Let every minister of the Gospel, every Sunday School superintendent, every Young People's Society (whether Christian Endeavor, Epworth League, Young People's Union, or Y. M. C. A.), every generous man and every tender-hearted and sympathetic woman throughout the length and breadth of this land who reads THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES, be true to Him whose life on earth was a ministry of helpfulness to the downtrodden, the unfortunate and the desolate; true to themselves and true to humanity, and lend a hand in this great work of throwing out the life-line to a million aged men, defenceless women and innocent children of Japan, and thus effectually answer their pitiful prayer of absolute helplessness.
A Piteous Appeal
The Rev. Henry Scott Jeffreys, of Tokio, writes to his brother, editor of the Post-Telegram, of Camden, New Jersey: "For God's sake print the clippings about the famine, and get all the help you can."
For contribution blanks, circulars, return envelopes in the interest of the Famine Sufferers, address as below.
Every contribution will be thankfully received, and promptly acknowledged in the columns of THE CHRISTIAN HERALD. Address:
Japan Famine Relief Work
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD
248 TO 258 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY
May God Bless the Givers and Multiply the Gifts.
