The scene enacted in Haverhill, Mass., several days ago furnishes a strange and striking commentary upon the growth of religious intolerance in the United States of America. It illustrates the great need of the propaganda in favor of free speech and free press for which this paper and many other journals throughout the country have long been contending.
Haverhill is a town of about forty-five thousand inhabitants, some thirty miles from Boston. One Thomas E. Leyden, the representative of no organized propaganda, so far as it appears, but lecturing on his own responsibility, applied for the use of the city hall, to discuss the question of the appropriation of public money for the maintenance of parochial schools. The mayor of the city refused the use of the hall. Some of the members of the Ministerial Association of Haverhill interested themselves in the matter, and entered a protest against the mayor’s action. Appeal was taken to the city council, and the action of the mayor was overruled, the use of the hall thereby being granted Mr. Leyden.
His first lecture, in which he apparently made quite a severe arraignment of the Catholic Church for its use of public funds, aroused considerable antagonism, and the meeting broke up in disturbance. He announced his intention of speaking on the same subject again on April 4. This was a signal for a serious uprising on the part of a large number who were opposed to the positions taken by the lecturer.
On the night of his second lecture a mob of eight or ten thousand people surrounded the city hall, demanding admission, with the evident design of meting out summary punishment to the speaker of the evening. Several hundred entered the building. Knowing the temper of the people, some went to Mr. Leyden and advised him not to appear on the platform. This, however, he did, and it proved the signal for a wild outburst on the part of those in the hall, which was taken up by others in the street. A large force of police was unable to hold the mob in check, the people demanding that Leyden be delivered to them. Seeing that they could not command the situation, the police sent a call for the State militia, which responded promptly. At the point of the bayonet the crowd was pushed back, but not until they had showered the building with stones, breaking many windows.
Hearing that Mr. Leyden had returned to his rooming-house, the mob sought it, and were restrained from wrecking the place only on the positive assurance of one of the officers that Mr. Leyden was not in the building. The mob then visited the house of one of the aldermen who had favored opening the city hall.7riddling it with stones. They did the same to the home of a dentist, one of the local supporters of the lecturer. Meanwhile Mr. Leyden was taken to another part of the city hall, and kept under guard in the aldermen’s room until the police were able to spirit him away to safety. It was after midnight when the mob finally dispersed, and quiet was restored.
It is charged that strong directing spirits were in control of the mob; that entrances to the city hall were controlled and guarded by appointed leaders; and that the demonstration was the result of a well-laid plan to break up the proposed lecture. Regarding this, Rev. J. Franklin Babb says, in the Boston Journal of April 5:—
“The work of the mob was not that of a disunited body, each individual following the dictates of his own mind. For example, each of the four exits from the hall was guarded by a detail of men who obeyed the commands of a leader, with almost military precision. The gangs that marched up to the residential district here and hurled stones, bricks, and pieces of coal through the windows of the houses of myself and Mr. van der Pyl, as well as of Alderman Hoyt and Dr. Herbert E. Wales, were organized and under definite leaders.
“Furthermore, I know positively that a party of 150 members of the Lawrence Council of the Knights of Columbus came to this city last night and took a prominent part in the rioting.”
Following this outburst, the Boston Journal of April 6 opened its columns to a frank and candid discussion of the principles involved. In doing so the editor made the following statement:—
“The Haverhill riot, no matter how disgraceful and needless, no matter how deserving of punishment and public execution are the perpetrators, is, however, less indecent than the secret, poisonous bitterness that occasioned it. If a Protestant Baptist is denied the vent of free speech, that is bad; if he is silenced by a riotous mob of Catholic sympathizers, that is worse. But the worst of all—the real shame to our State—is the presence of such bitter religious intolerance as made possible so terrible a climax.
“Courageous public men, both Protestant and Catholic, must face this problem—they must do their patriotic utmost to define the issue and to settle it by frank, fair, open, sane, and temperate discussion; the question is more important than party politics, because it goes to the very inner fabric of our national life; to ignore it now, to smooth it over, to seek to forget,—that is to place our community welfare in pawn to the future dangers of a deep-reaching religious feud.”
In response to this invitation on the part of the Journal, a number of leading citizens expressed themselves with reference to the question at issue. Hon. J. A. Brackett, former governor of Massachusetts, expressed himself as follows in that paper of April 6:—
“I agree with the statement in the Journal’s editorial upon ‘An Issue of Religion,’ that ‘there must be some way out of all this bitterness and hatred,’ and all good citizens should unite in the effort to find that way and to banish race and religious prejudices.
“Our citizens, with those of most other countries, are of various races and religious faiths. We should aim to prevent the division of the people into warring factions on account of these differences. A man is not responsible for happening to belong to any one of these races, and should not be discredited therefor, but should be judged solely by his conduct.
“Every man is entitled to the religious belief which his judgment approves, and should not be placed under any ban on account of it. To blend and harmonize various elements of which our citizenship is composed, remembering that wherever we were born, whatever our ancestry, whatever our religion, we are all unhyphenated Americans, each in duty bound to extend to all others the same rights he claims for himself, is one of the paramount duties of American patriotism today.”
Joseph F. O’Connell, at one time a member of Congress from Massachusetts, himself a Catholic, felt that it would be well to discuss the principles involved, but believed that before this could be done satisfactorily there must be secured common standing ground on the part of both Protestants and Catholics. In the Journal of April 7 he said:—
“I imagine that the greatest difficulty in the laudable aim which the Journal seeks to achieve will be found in a mass of historical inaccuracies which are so generally accepted as gospel truth by anti-Catholic controversialists. If there could be some judge who could first establish the facts for those who would argue, it would not be very difficult to bring about a complete understanding. I have never yet met a Catholic, priest or layman, who believed in fighting against a fact.”
These two comments are perhaps fairly representative of the many opinions expressed on the two sides of the question.
The week following the riot several addresses were delivered by leading clergymen regarding the principles underlying the outrage. Rev. William H. van Allen, rector of the Church of the Advent, expressed himself in an address entitled “The American Spirit and the Haverhill Riot.” He said, as quoted in the Boston Journal of April 6,—
“This outrage in Haverhill, like those of similar cause, was a reaction into barbarism, disgracing our country, State, and age. The animating spirit was antagonism to free speech, which is an essential part of American democracy and American freedom. I do not need to be reminded that free speech is liable to abuse, but he who accepts the privilege of free speech must hold himself responsible for what he says.
“If he who speaks freely, slanders, libels, or blasphemes, he can be punished. He who is abused is bound in honor to take his case into the courts, and there demand damages and redress. “But to suppress free speech by mob terrorism is absolutely intolerable, and such cannot be accomplished by any race, cult, or sect without a revolution which will overturn the American Republic.
“The question of the attitude of the Roman Catholic hierarchy toward public schools is a matter for legitimate public discussion. The fact of that hostility is not to be questioned. The Roman Catholics have established parochial schools, and are to be admired for their courage. They have supported them with a generosity to be emulated. But many Roman Catholic leaders are demanding that the virtue of this sacrifice on their part be vitiated by having the State support the schools.
“I stand for an American spirit when I say that the governor of this commonwealth would be justified in using every soldier to line the streets to obtain for this man his rights. Lives of criminal rioters are not sacred as is the right of free speech.
“I hope such an outrage will not occur again, and that the religious leaders of Massachusetts, both Catholic and Protestant, will unite in condemning mob spirit.”
The Sunday following, April 9, a number of the pastors of Haverhill discussed from their pulpits the principles involved. The remarks made by Dr. Nicholas van der Pyl, pastor of the Central Congregational Church, as given in the Boston Journal of April 10, are fairly representative of the position taken by the Protestant clergymen of Haverhill. Taking for the subject of his address “The Atonement of the City,” he said, in part:—
“I do not question the wisdom of any other man’s belief. The Roman Catholic Church has a right to its masses, its confessional, its ceremonies,—that is church business; and so long as a man makes his religion a matter between himself and God, he is not to be criticized. But when any man trenches on the public domain, he comes within the range of public criticism.
“The Catholic has a Constitutional right to demand public money for his parochial schools. He has not the right to object if I exercise my Constitutional right to oppose the use of public money for such purposes.
“A great public demonstration in which reputable citizens of all races and creeds may take part should be made to let the world know that this city will not tolerate again the disgraceful spectacle that has blotted the fair name of Haverhill.”
It would be gratifying if we could believe that an uprising like this was an impulsive move on the part of the people, and that it sprang not from religious antagonism and prejudice so deep seated as to resort to violence as its legitimate fruit. We feel, however, that outbursts of this character spring from the latter motive, and this is the view taken of the Haverhill riot by some of the citizens of that town.
Nor would the situation appear so serious if such demonstrations as this were confined to the commonwealth of8Massachusetts, even though we think of that as one of the early colonies, made up of men who fled from religious intolerance in the Old World. But manifestations of a mob spirit of this sort are becoming altogether too common in different parts of the United States.
We do not pose as an apologist for Mr. Leyden. We never heard of the gentleman previously to this incident. We are not informed as to the spirit actuating his work, nor the manner in which he deals with the question of Catholic use of appropriations. His manner of treating this question may be offensive in the extreme. He may make unfounded charges against the Church of Rome, hold up to scorn her dogmas and doctrines, her customs and practices, and the moral delinquencies of her priesthood. With this manner of attack upon the Church of Rome we have no sympathy. We deprecate the spirit which has characterized many of the publications which have been carrying on an anti-Catholic campaign. The spirit they manifest many times and the billingsgate they employ are quite as reprehensible as the evil they attack. But we contend that even if Mr. Leyden was guilty of this discourtesy and used these unwise methods, there was proper redress for the religious body which he attacked. That redress was not mob law, but an appeal to the courts of justice.
While the courts of the United States accord to every citizen the liberty of free speech, they also make him wholly responsible for his utterances, and he can be called to account at any time for misrepresentation, slander, or vilification of any of his fellow citizens. And it is a sad but striking tribute to the times upon which we have entered to consider that men in enlightened countries will hark back to the methods of barbarianism rather than make appeal to reason and to the recourse which is granted them by the laws which they themselves, or their representatives, have helped to frame.
Every American citizen needs to give heed to the safeguarding of his guaranteed rights and liberties. Our fellows need to be awakened to the dangers which threaten them. They need to be educated anew in the vital issues around which these controversies center. Let us by the material which has been provided in our religious liberty literature seek to place before them the truth regarding these questions, so that they shall not be misled in the future over the issues which may arise. F. M. W.
Our Refuge
By Worthie Harris Holden
WORTHIE HARRIS HOLDEN
Each tear may claim its rainbow,
Each night its polar star,
The stream that threads the valley,
Its mountain home afar.
Each trial may claim a promise,
Each need its boon through prayer,
And every stone a pillow
May find a Bethel there.
Why tread the vale of shadows
Abandoned to distress?
Amid the threatening storm clouds
Thy sheltering Rock possess.
So, arched by many a rainbow,
Uprear thy house of prayer
Where angels of His presence
A constant feast prepare.
GEO. I. BUTLER
By George I. Butler
The Early Experiences of the Advent Believers, as They Entered upon the Time of the Saints’ Patience
GEO. I. BUTLER
In Rev. 14: 6-12 we have a prophecy of the advent proclamation to prepare a people for the coming of our Saviour the second time. That coming will be the greatest event that has ever occurred in the history of mankind, or ever will occur in all the future. It will close up the drama of earth’s history, and bring to an end Satan’s rule in the affairs of men. It will gather all the good of past and present ages to their eternal reward, and destroy all the wicked living.
This proclamation is threefold. The first message announces to the world, to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, the closing phase of the gospel message, and the beginning of the judgment in the courts of heaven; and it continues till the close of probation. The second message proclaims the moral fall of all who reject the warnings of the first message. The third message presents the final doom of that great apostasy which has corrupted the truths of the gospel, and has caused the death of millions of God’s martyrs. This message is the final warning against that power and all its false doctrines, and it brings to view the special truths God’s people proclaim in the last work of God on earth: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” It also brings to view the patience of the saints, which characterizes the true people of God in the last days. The next event is the Lord’s second coming in the clouds of heavenly angels.
This is a special work to prepare a people for Christ’s coming. There is only one church on earth proclaiming these messages,—the Seventh-day Adventist. No other people or denomination pretends to explain these messages. The first message was announced to the world by William Miller and his fellow laborers from 1836-44. It stirred the religious world. The nearness of Christ’s coming had been in a measure preached before this, but not with such power. Mr. Miller’s message was a time message. The very words of that message imply this feature: “The hour [or period] of his judgment is come.” That is a stupendous fact. In the heavenly courts the work of deciding the destiny of every person for weal or woe will be done before the coming of Christ to execute the decisions of that great tribunal. There must of necessity be such a decision before Christ could come. God would have his church on earth warned of the beginning of that grand assize, so important is it to each individual.
Paul told the Athenians, in A. D. 53, that God had appointed such a day. Acts 17:31. Where is the record of this appointment? It is found in only one place in the Bible. Daniel says, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed,” or “purified” (8:14, margin). The longest prophetic period—“two thousand and three hundred days”—is fully explained to Daniel in the latter part of the ninth chapter, after the prophet had especially prayed for light. The angel’s words give clear evidence that Daniel greatly desired to understand when the long period was to begin: “Seventy weeks [of prophetic time] are determined [literal Hebrew reads “cut off”] upon thy people [the Jews] and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.” Verse 24. This seventy weeks of years (490 in all) “cut off” for Daniel’s people, the Jews, evidently embraces the time God would regard that people as his peculiar heritage. The language immediately following this makes the matter very clear.
The great point of interest in this prophecy is to learn when this period of twenty-three hundred prophetic days, or years, begins, and this the angel explicitly states: “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah the prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.” Verse 25. Seven weeks and threescore and two weeks would be sixty-nine weeks of years; that is, 483 prophetic years of the 490 years “cut off” as the Jewish nation’s9allotment. “The going forth of the decree to restore and build Jerusalem” evidently refers to the letter of the Persian king Artaxerxes, which was given to Ezra the scribe, authorizing the complete rebuilding of Jerusalem and its wall, and the full reestablishment of the nation and the law of God. This decree is recorded in full in the seventh chapter of Ezra.
This decree of Artaxerxes went into effect in 457 B. C., in the autumn of that year, when Ezra reached Jerusalem. Twenty-three hundred years from that point would reach to the autumn of A. D. 1844, or the time spoken of by the angel to the prophet Daniel: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days [years]; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” Dan. 8:14. The clearest and most positive evidence establishes these facts. This prophecy covers several most important events, giving the exact point of time when they should occur.
Seven weeks (or 49 years) after Artaxerxes’ decree went into effect, the city of Jerusalem and its wall, the Jewish system of polity, were fully established. After sixty-nine weeks of years (483 years), in the fall of the year A. D. 27, the Messiah (“the anointed one”) should enter upon his ministerial work. When at his baptism the Holy Spirit descended and anointed him, he began his work. The last week of his ministry on earth remained to complete the four hundred and ninety years “cut off” for that people. We are told that in the midst of the week (the middle of that last week) the Messiah should be cut off. Christ’s ministry lasted three years and a half, when he was crucified. The first preaching of the disciples was to the Jews only. Then when the Jewish nation persecuted and killed the disciples, and slew Stephen, the gospel work began among the Gentiles. Paul was raised up and sent to the Gentiles with a special mission. Then the special privileges and blessings of the Jewish nation ceased, and the 490 years “cut off” from the 2300 years terminated, in the year A. D. 34.
There remained 1,810 years of that long period, and during these years the gospel was to go to all nations alike. At its close the time for the cleansing, or justifying, of the sanctuary must begin; for “unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed,” said the angel Gabriel to Daniel, yea, and to all people.
The advent people believed the cleansing of the sanctuary was the cleansing of this earth by fire at the coming of Christ. But Christ did not come. Perhaps never in the history of this world were God’s people called to meet a greater disappointment.
(To be continued)
Bowling Green, Fla.
Turning Blunders Into Advancement
When you make a blunder, step ahead of it; and thus you will make it an occasion for advancement.—The Christian Herald.
The Ninth Commandment
By Milton C. Wilcox
The Law of God — No. 14
The Ninth Commandment
MILTON C. WILCOX
“THOU shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Ex. 20:16.
In other words, thou shalt not tell an untruth; thou shalt not lie. The greatest sin is when the lying is used to injure another.
We like people upon whom we can depend. When they tell a story or make a statement, we like to believe it to be true, or at least be assured that the one who tells it believes it to be true. Does such a one make a bargain with us? We know he will stand to it if possible. Does he make a pledge to God’s cause? He will pay it. It is a sacred vow, and he cannot respect himself and leave it unpaid. He has given his word; let that suffice. Yet somehow there are those who seem to feel that it is not important to pay pledges to the Master’s work if not convenient. They reason, Let it go; God will forgive.
God may forgive the delinquency, morally and financially, but the man has himself lost, lost the strength of character that accrues by keeping promises under difficulties. Such failures are false notes in our song of character, breaks in the lute, jars in the harmony of life.
Lying is one of the most essentially evil habits that one can form. What a blow it is to character to mold it after that which is false and undependable! It strikes at the very foundation of character—intrinsic truth. It is disintegrating, cancerous. Montaigne truly says, “Lying is a hateful and accursed vice. If we did but discover the horrors and consequences of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes.” “If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave toward God, and a coward toward man. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.” But the man who lies, generally forgets God, and therefore has no sense of his presence.
The habit of lying has various sources. It sometimes begins in exaggeration. A story needs embellishing, and it is done at the expense of truth. Not long ago a minister told a story in the writer’s presence of an incident that he had witnessed in a certain State, when the writer positively knew that it had occurred years before in another State, and that that minister was not even in the State when it occurred. It had been heard, appropriated, and finally, perhaps, sincerely passed as his own. But one would not so exaggerate or falsify a story if telling it to Him who knows the hearts of all men. Why, then, do so when telling it in his invisible presence?
Sometimes men lie to hide mistakes or cover negligence in duty. They are ashamed to tell the truth, and commit a sin still more shameful. And as the liar talks on, his web of speech becomes more and more tangled. He may think others do not see it, but the discerning do, and the liar has lost the confidence of his fellows. Addison has well said, “A lie is troublesome, and sets a man’s invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good. It is like building upon a false foundation, which continually stands in need of props to shove it up; and proves, at last, more chargeable [expensive] than to have raised a substantial building at first upon a true and solid foundation.”
Lying or bearing false witness is not always a matter of plain words or even of any words. It is sometimes an insinuation, an innuendo, a suggestion of evil regarding some one. Sometimes it is a sneer, a curl of the lip, a gesture. But they are baneful poisons that stab some one’s reputation, blast some one’s good name, poison some one’s mind against another. God’s commandment is exceeding broad, and condemns anything that bears false witness against another. That commandment is so broad that it condemns the false and sinful life that continually bears false witness against God.
Note what the Scriptures of truth say as to the sin of lying and how God regards it.
First of all, God “cannot lie;” he is intrinsic, personified Truth. Titus 1:2.
A lie is of the devil. “When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:44.
We may readily see to what class we belong. He that is of the truth heareth Christ’s voice; he that loveth and maketh a lie is of the devil. Therefore “lying lips are an abomination to Jehovah; but they that deal truly are his delight.” Prov. 12:22. Among the seven things which are abominable before God are a “lying tongue,” and “a false witness that speaketh lies.” Prov. 6:16-19.
In the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, God has much to say against the men who teach that which is not true; who prophesy lies, and do it in God’s name; who make the people trust in a lie. Such teachers may themselves be deceived, but the lies they tell are no less potent for destruction to the souls that believe them. See chapters 27, 28, 29 of Jeremiah; chapters 13 and 22 of Ezekiel;10and chapters 28 and 29 of Isaiah.
Those preserved through the last plagues of wrath have for shield and buckler God’s truth (Ps. 91:4), while those lost under the strong delusions of the last days will be those deceived by the “working of error, that they should believe a lie.” 2 Thess. 2:10-12.
All liars shall have their part in the terrible woes of final destruction, among “the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters.” See Rev. 21:8; 22:15.
They are there now, though they know it not. Lying is in various degrees respectable among men. God classes it now where he will class it then. Let us accept his classification now, and leave off lying forever.
“O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!”
It may mean confession and humility to our proud heart to get out of our maze of falsity. But it is worth the while at any cost. We are ever the gainers in choosing the truth instead of a lie, the genuine instead of the counterfeit. It is worth while to break partnership with “the father of lies.” It is worth while to take the gilded rotten stones out of our building of character, and replace them, by the grace of Christ, with the precious stones of righteousness and truth. It is worth while to be true to our own conscience, our own convictions, and to our God.
Truth is unpleasant, inconvenient at times, to our limited human vision; but in God’s great plan it is always right, and will so be seen when the divine judgment shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and God shall bid the righteous nation that keepeth truth to enter into the eternal kingdom (Isa. 26:2), led by Him who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
Dear soul, have you fallen under the power and darkness of deception or deceiving? Break away from your bonds. The Lord’s injunction, “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another,” is in Christ Jesus an enabling act to us. There is power in Christ to cleanse. There is power to break the tangled, twisted threads. There is power to wash the stains away, and put into the erstwhile deceptive human heart the beauty and love of truth.
“Dare to be true, nothing can need a lie;
A fault which needs it most grows two
thereby.”
“Then to side with truth is noble when we
share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit and ’tis
prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the
coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit till his Lord is
crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith
they had descried.”
Mountain View, Cal.
A Center of Peace and Good Will
“I THANK God that I am awake, and life is pulsing through my veins. I have a part in the great world. I can be a little center from which shall radiate peace, kindliness, and good will. I thank God for opportunity.”
The Picture
By C. B. Sappenfield
C. B. SAPPENFIELD
The little picture on the wall,
Placed there by childish art,
Is sweet reminder of the one,
Enshrined within my heart.
'Twas, ah, how many months ago
That he, my darling boy,
Clasped his warm arms around my neck,
And thrilled my heart with joy!
“See, mamma!” loud he cried in glee,
“Your picture on the wall!”
Bright as a rose in June was he,
But faded in the fall.
His little bed, so clean and white,
Stands just beside the door,
The hobbyhorse he used to ride
Is near it on the floor.
I want that picture to remain,
Though rude it looks to you;
I want its impress on my heart
To stay my whole life through.
Golden, Colo.
A Native Outschool Teacher’s Experience
Some of the difficulties attending the labors of our native evangelists in Basutoland are enumerated by one of the workers, in writing to Brother Silsbee. We give a portion of his letter as follows:—
“DEAR BROTHER: I received your letter Friday before last. I was very glad to get it. I have noted all you say. I have been trying to do the best I could here to tell the people about the second coming of Christ, also about keeping the Sabbath of the high God.
“One of the women when I was speaking wanted to go to another mission, where she can get a drink of joala [native beer]. Many of them won’t come to the Sabbath church because we do not drink joala. Today all the people here have gone to the — mission, because they have made lots of joala. It is a big feast of baptism. The people go there only to eat and drink. It is very bad in this place. The people do not know which is truth.
JOSHUA NDABAMBI AND HIS WIFE
“You ask if the chief is still drinking. Yes, he is still drinking, only he does not go to those feasts. Also about the school. The people in this place have taken the children from our school and sent them to the heathen training class, those which can read very good. Now I have only fourteen children, nine children not coming any more. They are in the school of this world.
“You must pray for me. Although I am in this place of hard-hearted people, the Lord knows what he can do with them. The only thing I can do is to tell them about the Holy Word of God. Sometimes I get so discouraged that I wish I was not in this place. I do pray to God to show me how to work for him in preaching the gospel among this people.
J. NDABAMBI.
G. A. WOOD
By G. A. Wood
Java
G. A. WOOD
A FEW months ago Brother and Sister Hing, faithful members of our church, induced a Chinese couple to attend our Sabbath school and other meetings. At first they understood but little, but they kept coming, and little by little light has dispelled their darkness. After they had been attending the meetings for some weeks, the husband lost his employment, but they began to keep the Sabbath, according to the light they had. We visited them at their home, which is a few miles from Surabaya. They welcomed us heartily, and listened to the truth. Brother and Sister Hing visit them frequently, and often spend Sabbath with them.
On one occasion the husband became very ill with malaria. In her despair the wife brought him to the city, and called on Mrs. Wood for help. They were much impressed by the rational treatments, and through God's help the disease speedily gave way, and the man was able to return to his home. Through the power of the gospel, the wife gave up chewing betel nut, and gambling, on which she had spent a fortune. On December 18 she was buried with her Lord in baptism, by Pastor Detamore, who was visiting us at that time.
Another convert, also found by Brother and Sister Hing, is a poor Chinese woman who earns her living by sewing for the shops. This woman was greatly attracted to the truth from the first time she heard it, and has walked in the light as it has come to her. She is doing what she can to give the light to others, and is sending literature to her husband, who has left her and is living in another island of this group. Truly the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all who will accept it.
As I was visiting the shops in a neighboring town to secure subscriptions for Malay and Chinese papers, a man and his wife came where I was canvassing. The woman asked what I was selling, and eagerly selected some tracts on present truth, which she bought and read. Later she came to our house to see us, but we were both out, and she met Brother van de Group, who sold her a Dutch “Bible Readings.” She was impressed that she had found the truth, and began telling her neighbors about it. She made other attempts to see us, and at last succeeded. She finally attended our Friday evening and Sabbath services, and expressed a desire11to be baptized and unite with the church.
She moved to a city some distance from Surabaya, so we could not visit her frequently to have readings with her, but she came to Surabaya as often as she could, each time taking back with her a supply of books and tracts, which, after reading them herself, she sold to her neighbors. In this way she prepared herself for baptism. On our way home from a canvassing tour in Samarang, we went to see this sister, and her aged mother, who, though blind, hopes to live to see the Lord come in the clouds of heaven. Two other sisters are living with them. One is much impressed with the truth, and loves to help on the work of God.
Reforming Oneself Reforms the Public
He who reforms himself has done more to reform the public than a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots.—Lavater.
