SEVERAL years ago my brother was in—one cheerless day, with about half an hour on his hands before train time. Strolling along near the railway station, he noticed a tidy restaurant, and went in for lunch. A bright boy came to take his order, and as soon as he brought it, sat down to his lessons. A remarkable man, evidently the proprietor, was seated near the fire, with a disabled foot propped up on a chair. When my brother had finished his meal, he approached him, saying, “You have a bright boy to wait on your customers.”
“Yes, indeed,” said the man, with parental pride, “I couldn’t hire so good a boy as that; he is my son, and was the means of my opening this place instead of keeping a public house, which was the way I got a living for some years; and I’ll tell you how it was. He came from school one day heavy hearted, and when I asked him what was the matter, he began to cry, but couldn’t speak. After I urged him, he said that at recess some of the boys asked one another what their fathers did. One said his father was a plumber, another that his was a carpenter; and when they came to my boy, who said his father kept a public house, one of them said, ‘That’s the meanest kind of business.’ ‘And I could see they all felt the same way. That made me feel awfully ashamed; so, father, if you will only give up the liquor trade, I’ll do anything I can to help you.’ With that he threw his arms around my neck, and, sobbing, begged me to give it up. Well, the end of it was I sold out. I don’t make so much money as I did selling liquors, but it goes further, and we have a happy home. My wife can help along, because decent people come here for their meals; but before, I did not like to have her around, there was13so much low talk. My boy has been as good as his word. I couldn’t ask for a better son.”
My brother thanked the man for his confidence, and, after giving his hearty approval, went his way.—Little Christian.
The Blessing of Service
By Mrs. M. K. Emerson
MRS. M. K. EMERSON
SWEET the mission of Jesus,
To bind up the broken hearts;
Creation rings with the joy it brings,
And the gloom of earth departs.
Peace to the troubled spirit,
Comfort and cheer to the soul;
This stormy old earth with its borrowed mirth
Can no lasting joy control.
Jesus, the light of the world,
Can brighten our path below,
Help us to bear earth’s sorrow and care,
Looking to him as we go.
He, the sweet balm in Gilead,
The solace for human woe;
The world can not share a treasure so fair,
Our Friend and Saviour to know.
Look in the world about you
For some good that you might do,
’Twill add full measure to all your pleasure,
And make you more happy, too.
Idle Words
By William Nehring
WILLIAM NEHRING
“I SAY unto you,” says our Lord, “that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Matt. 12: 36, 37.
An apostle says, “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient; but rather giving of thanks.” Eph. 5: 3, 4.
There is no greater evil in the world to-day than that of idle, pernicious talking, condemned in the texts already quoted. It is a popular idea among young people that in order to enjoy life and the society of others, they must jest and joke and be witty, to produce laughter and merriment for others, and also to attract attention to themselves. These ideas obtain in many homes, and are encouraged in various ways. The judgment alone will reveal the terrible harvest of evil resulting from the idle and useless words that should never have been spoken.
Perhaps there is no other subject concerning which there is so much jesting and joking as that of love and marriage. From bantering the little school children on up, in various degrees of foolishness and vulgarity, boys and girls, fathers and mothers, old and young, with few exceptions, seem to take part, more or less, in this great evil. To a great extent these are doing the same work in poisoning the hearts and minds of the young that is done by the vile and vulgar, out of whose perverse and wicked hearts evil is continually being brought forth in impure words and evil insinuations.
Let us try to see why there is so much harm in this jesting, which some think so harmless and smart.
In wisdom and love, and in order to bind the human family in bonds of union, happiness, and love that could not easily be broken, God ordained the marriage relation. This is the most sacred and holy relation that human beings can enter into, if carried out as God intended. If not so carried out, the homes and happiness of those who enter its covenant are ruined, and, breaking their solemn vows, the sins of fathers and mothers are visited upon future generations. Because God’s purpose in this is not carried out, the world to-day is reaping an awful harvest of crime, insanity, immorality, and disease, and all these evils are terribly on the increase.
At no previous time in the history of our country has the marriage relation been so lightly regarded and divorces so easily obtained as at the present time, while gross immorality prevails to an alarming extent; and no doubt the same is true of all the world. One great reason for all this is that false and improper ideas are held in regard to the sacred covenant that a pure and holy God himself ordained. Through jesting and joking, that which is pure and holy is brought down to a low, cheap, vulgar level.
We should think with reverence of the wonderful work of God, which we can never fully understand in this sinful world. Then let us no more dishonor him by speaking lightly of any of his works. Love is a plant of heavenly origin; but the genuine article is scarce, because it has long been counterfeited and made a mockery of by thoughtless jesters.
While children in times past grew up together as friends, playmates, and schoolmates, to-day these happy relations seem out of date, and we often hear parents, friends, and others teasing little children about their beaux, sweethearts, and the like. O, that all who do this might realize the evil of it! No wonder the children become indignant; for even in their childish simplicity, they seem to know that it is too sacred a subject to be treated in such a trifling manner, and that it is a matter in which they have no part until they reach later years. But alas, the teasing and tormenting continue, until often they become bold, flippant, and immodest, losing respect for and confidence in parents and friends, and turning away from God.
“A girl’s best friend is her mother.” But the father also should be included, and the boys as well as the girls should receive the loving counsel and advice of parents. Then let fathers and mothers be careful how they jest with their children; for if they are always met with jests and jokes concerning the nature God himself has given, they certainly will not feel like confiding in their parents in reference to their associates and the attachments they will form sooner or later. At some time all youth will gain from some source a knowledge of life and of their special natures. Then let all lovers of purity awake to their responsibility and teach the truth line upon line and precept upon precept; for this truth, when mixed with the vile error of Satan, is dangerous to the young and inexperienced.
Let us be careful not to “offend one of these little ones;” for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
Kiel, Okla.
What General Sheridan Feared
Two grave, quiet-looking men stood on the steps of a big house in Washington some years ago. They were watching four bright children get into a cart and drive down the street, throwing back kisses and “good-by” to papa and papa’s friend, the general.
The younger man and father was General Phil Sheridan—“Fighting Phil,” as he was called in those days. Another general, an old friend, said, “Phil, how do you manage your little army of four?”
“Don’t manage; they are mischievous soldiers, but what good comrades! All the good there is in me they bring out. Their little mother is a wonderful woman, and worth a regiment of officers. John, I often think what pitfalls are in waiting for my small, brave soldiers all through life. I wish I could always help them over.”
“Phil, if you could choose for your little son from all the temptations which will beset him the one most to be feared, what would it be?”
General Sheridan leaned his head against the doorway, and said, soberly: “It would be the curse of strong drink. Boys are no saints. We are all self-willed, may be full of courage and thrift and push and kindness and charity, but woe to the man or boy who becomes a slave of liquor. O, I had rather see my little son die to-day than see him carried in to his mother drunk. One of my brave soldier boys on the field said to me just before the battle, when he gave me his message to his mother if he should be killed: ‘Tell her I kept my promise to her. Not one drink have I tasted.’ The boy was killed. I carried the message with my own lips to the mother. She said, ‘General, that is more glory for my boy than if he had taken a city.’”—Selected.
About the House
To keep the kitchen sink in order is one of the first duties of a housekeeper. Constant attention is necessary to prevent that porcelain or lead receptacle from becoming clogged and blackened with grease. Close to the sink should always be chlorid of lime or washing soda—we recommend both, to be used alternately. Scald the sink every other day by letting the hot water run for five or ten minutes, when it is at its hottest, over a few lumps of washing soda placed on the grating. Twice a week in hot weather use unslaked lime instead of the soda. At night a handful of borax thrown on the grating will keep away the visiting croton bugs.
These useful suggestions concerning the care of the refrigerator come from Marion Harland’s pen:—
In our germ-mad generation, it is surprising that, in the howl against cold storage foods, so little has been made of the peril to health offered by unclean refrigerators. The confined air is of itself unwholesome, imparting a “close taste” to butter and meats, easily recognized, yet rarely analyzed. The chill of the ice arrests decay, but it does not prevent the growth of mold.
Did you ever look at a section of mold through a microscope? You would see a pretty forest or jungle of divers colors. Like non-edible toadstools, it is fair to see, and, like them, it is poisonous to the human stomach. If the sink be a faithful witness to the housewifery of owner or caretaker, the refrigerator is a yet more correct reporter. It should be absolutely odorless.
Fragrant fruits must never be set in the same compartment with other foods. If milk and butter are kept in the refrigerator, give them a shelf to themselves, and unless the butter be perfectly fresh, it should be kept away from the milk.
In summer the shelves should be cleared daily, and the contents sorted under the eye of the mistress. The corners must be scrubbed faithfully with a cloth wrung out in boiling water and baking-soda, that nothing may accumulate there. Then the doors must be left open until the shelves are entirely dry. To shut up humidity in the chilled interior is to make a damp cave of it.—Selected.
How to Be Useful
ALMOST every little boy and girl would like to be of some use in this world, but sometimes it is hard to know what to do in order to be useful.
What is needed most of all, I think, is a pair of quick eyes to see what is needed. If boys and girls have quick eyes and willing hands, they will find ever so many ways of being useful, at home, in school, and in whatever other place they may happen to be.
The boy who has quick eyes will see when papa wants a book from the library, and will offer to go and get it without waiting to be asked. He will see when mama wants something from the store, and will offer to run such an errand before he goes off to play ball.
The girl who has quick eyes will see when grandma wants her needle threaded, and will do it so promptly, and yet so quietly, that grandma will feel as if fairy fingers were helping her to sew. The girl with quick eyes will see when baby is restless, and will gently care for its wants, and thus often help mama.
The boy or girl with quick eyes will see when teacher is tired, and will be so still and attentive in the class room that she will feel that her pupils are actually helping her to teach.
There are so many things that we can do to help others, if only we have quick eyes. Let us try to be as useful in this world as we can possibly be, and we shall find that life grows sweeter and happier the longer we live.—Apples of Gold.
Making the Best of Things
There is scarcely any one who does not think but that he has been unjustly dealt with, in some respects, either by nature or by fortune. What is to be done? If these individual imperfections can be remedied, let us strive in every legitimate way to help ourselves. If not, why not make the best of them?
It is not so much our own actual condition of life that breeds happiness as the use which we make of our opportunities. Some people will be cheery and useful anywhere, and under any livable conditions. Others are correspondingly dismal. Therefore, as a matter of self-convenience at least, let us make the best of things.—Selected.
The Need of Homes
The nation needs homes. The greatest factor in the life of the child and of the nation is not the institution, but the home circle.
Amid the stress of many duties there is danger to-day that the American home will suffer. The boys and girls gain their ideals of life upon the street, among companionships of their own choice, and often they owe less of their character to parental influence than to the chance suggestions that they have picked up carelessly.
It seems to us that the mother in the home has a higher calling than the church visitor or the charity worker. Her influence may not be wide, but it is deep; she may not win newspaper notoriety, but she wields a scepter which a king might envy; and in the lives she has molded she will live nobly long after her generation has passed away. The heroic service is not wrought abroad before great multitudes, or on the thrones of commerce. Heroism is found where the mother sits by the fireside, and out of her own heart teaches the children the alphabet of the gospel, and step by step assists them amid their little trials and duties, not to hear only, but to do. Here at least the grain of mustard seed, which indeed is the least of all seeds, when it is matured, becomes a tree of prodigious growth.—Home Herald.
Pure and Undefiled Religion
By H. Van Dyke
THE world has small need of a religion which consists solely or chiefly of emotions and raptures. But the religion that follows Jesus Christ, alike when he goes up into the high mountain to pray, and when he comes down into the dark valley to work; the religion that listens to him, alike when he tells us of the peace and joy of the Father’s house, and when he calls us to feed his lambs; the religion that is willing to suffer as well as to enjoy, to labor as well as to triumph; the religion that has a soul to worship God, and a heart to love man, and a hand to help in every good cause, is pure and undefiled.—H. Van Dyke.
A Remarkable Conversion
Told by a Missionary in China
A MISSIONARY in China was once preparing a cup of tea in his tent, when a native of the district, one of the literati, but notoriously wicked—indeed a leader in wickedness, who kept a den of infamy near by which was the resort of the abandoned of both sexes—ventured into the tent. After a few moments’ conversation about the weather, and such commonplaces, the missionary approached him on the matters of the soul in some simple way, and was at once met by the resistance that comes from agnosticism. This flagrant Chinese sinner fell back upon our ignorance of everything outside the realm of matter and daily experience, and particularly objected to believing anything he could not see and understand.
The missionary met him at the very threshold of his own objection, and pointing to the little tea-kettle on the brazier just beginning to emit steam, said: “Well, now there is a simple thing you see, but don’t understand. I take some spirits, or charcoal, and a match—all cold and without a flame. I strike the cold match on a cold surface, and it blazes up. It sets the spirits or the charcoal burning. The flame strikes the cold surface of the kettle, and the heat passes in some way through the kettle bottom, and comes in contact with the water, and, in some way, sets the water moving more and more rapidly, until it is as we say ‘boiling.’ What was cold becomes hot, until the liquid changes to vapor and comes out at the spout, first invisible, then becomes visible as a white cloud of steam, and presently changes back to water, and falls in drops upon the earth. You see all this, but not one step in it all can even you, a literary man, explain. When you can tell me how matter that is cold and without flame, develops fire, light, and heat; how what is outside passes through metal and gets inside; how what was liquid becomes a floating vapor; how the visible becomes invisible and then visible again; how the water becomes vapor, and the vapor again becomes water; how what was cold becomes hot, and what is hot becomes cold,—I will undertake to explain the mystery of any fact declared in this Book,” laying his hand on a copy of the Chinese New Testament.
The Chinese scholar had, of course, nothing to say, and naturally diverted the current of conversation to something else; and, as he was about to leave, the missionary, picking up a neatly bound copy of the Gospel according to John, in Chinese, said: “I will give you this, if you will agree, before you to go to bed to-night, to read just the first three chapters.” Half playfully the man accepted the gift and the conditions, and, taking the book with him, went off to his den.
The book and the promise were alike forgotten until he had gone to bed, and then the thought occurred to him, “I promised the foreign devil I would read three chapters in that book before I went to bed, and he’ll ask me the next time he sees me if I have done it. Well, that promise is easily fulfilled.” So he lighted his little lamp, and, still lying in bed, began to read. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That book did not read as any other he had ever read, and his curiosity was awakened. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness has not overpowered it. . . . That was the true light that illumines every man by its coming into the world.”
He read on, irresistibly compelled, as he read, to notice the novelty of the teaching in this gospel story. He read those words spoken by John the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb of God, which beareth away the sin of the world.” Who can read that and not stop to think? He read on to the third chapter, and then he found one of the Jewish literati in conversation with Jesus, and stumbling over the mystery of the new birth from above,—just as he had refused to accept what he could not understand,—and he observed how our Lord answered the Pharisee very much as the missionary had answered him: “Here is the wind. Did you ever see it? Yet you see its effects as it bends the branches of trees and sways the fields of grain. You know not whence it comes, or whither it goes—how it comes to blow, and how it comes to die away and stop blowing—how anything so soft and pliable as the wind lifts the waves, and tears up deeply rooted trees: So is every one that is born of the Spirit. You see the proofs and results of the Spirit’s working, but never the Spirit himself. You can not tell how he works, whence he comes, or whither he goes.” And the learned blasphemer and panderer to vice remembered what the missionary had said about the water, and fire, and steam in the tea-kettle, and could not but say to himself: “There is certainly something very like, in what he said and in what this Jesus teacher said to this man of the Pharisees. You see the fire burn and the kettle boil, but you can not tell why or how. And you see the Spirit make men new as if born again, but you can not tell how.” And he read on: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That was wonderful. God giving his own Son, and sinners having only to accept God’s gift by believing!
A little farther on he read how light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. And he felt that that was a true description of himself. He did not want to see any light; it made too clear his own evil doing, and he would run away from any truth that showed him his own bad heart and life. Then, as he finished his promised task and came to the end of that third chapter, he read those wonderful words: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life,” and if that was true, he had only to believe in this Jesus and have this strange gift of everlasting life.
Incredible as it may seem, he got out of bed, upon his knees, and asked for salvation. He became, simply by reading that gospel story, and without any man to guide him, a true believer; and not only abandoned his old life and all its companions and vices, but turned that den of infamy into a place of prayer. The gate of hell became a gate of heaven.—The Missionary Review of the World.
W. A. BARLOW
By W. A. Barlow
Santalia and the Santals—No. 2
W. A. BARLOW
The bajra (sorghum vulgare) is another good crop, coming into season a little later than the maize. Its grain appears as a tuft surmounting a stalk eight or ten feet high. It yields one of the cheapest foods in the country, of the grain order, but is less nutritious than the Indian corn. A number of millets are also very widely cultivated. In a good season oats or wheat may be sown in a rice-field after the harvest, and raised as a cold weather crop. The most important of the cold weather crops are the oil seeds, of which castor-oil and mustard are the principal. Flax is also cultivated to a small extent, not for its fiber, but for its oil (linseed). A little cotton is raised, chiefly as a garden crop, but most of the cloth produced in the district is woven from the Bombay yarn. (This is the yarn which we have been using in our small weaving plant, at our Seventh-day Adventist mission station, Babclmohal.) A few vegetables are to be found, among them the sweet potato. The potato itself has probably a future before it; at present it is imported in considerable quantities from other parts of India, and is becoming very popular.
Minerals are the products which give the district its chief importance from the industrial or commercial point of view. Of these coal is the chief.
Ten or twelve years ago this part of Bengal acquired temporary notoriety in connection with the “gold boom” in Calcutta. Bogus companies were formed by the score, in some cases on a basis no more substantial than that the general appearance of a certain district reminded some Australian expert of the country around Ballarat. Most of the companies had but an ephemeral existence, but others went so far as to import valuable machinery, which is still lying15rusting in the jungle. There is no doubt that gold does exist in the soil, but it has not yet been found in sufficient quantities to make it worth while mining for it. Copper and lead are also found in some places, but iron is the most common metal.
The soil throughout the district is not the rich, alluvial soil of the adjoining Gangetic valley, but the “laterite,” sandy, stony, dry soil, with masses of black rock breaking through at intervals. The average rainfall at Chakai (which is only about fourteen miles from Simultala) for the ten years (1893-1903) was found to be fifty-one to fifty-six inches, and this probably approximates to the average of the entire district. Most of the rain falls in the rainy season, between June and the end of September, but during the ten years referred to the only month in which practically no rain was recorded was December. Owing to the character of the soil and the natural drainage by the innumerable streams and rivers, the humidity is less than in any other place in Bengal. The temperature may fall almost to the freezing-point on a cold night in January, when a touch of hoarfrost may occasionally be seen, but it often rises to above one hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit in the shade in April and May, when the hot dry winds are blowing from the west like blasts from a furnace. The hot season, however, is varied by thunder-storms and “north-westers,” when the temperature may fall twenty or thirty degrees in half an hour; and even at its worst, the dryness of the air makes the heat less exhausting than it would be in a more moist climate. On the whole, the district is an exceptionally healthful one for India, or at least for Bengal.
Historically, this district has always been a border-land. It marks the point where Bengal merges into the North-west, where Bengal and Hindustani meet and intermingle. The local rajahs are chiefly ghatwals, or pass keepers, who held their land in return for their services for keeping raiders and robbers in check. The last stand made by the Mogul power against the British was of near Monghyr (I may say that our Simultala Mission is situated in the division of Monghyr), where Mir Kassim, the Sirdar of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, was finally defeated. The ruins of a bridge which he blew up to cover his retreat into Oudh are still visible. Then in 1857 Santalia marked the limit of the actual mutiny. At Deoghur (about twelve miles south of Simultala, where Brother R. Cook and family have been staying for a few weeks) is the grave of the local magistrate who was murdered in the mutiny. A sepoy regiment that had been stationed there in connection with the Santal rising two years earlier, mutinied and killed their officers. The magistrate saved his wife and child by sending them off in a palki to Raniganj, eighty miles distant, which was then the railway terminus, but he remained at his post till he met the fate which overtook so many of our countrymen at that time.
Simultala, India.
North Brazil Mission
By F. W. Spies
F. W. SPIES
After the organization of the Rio Grande do Sul Conference, the Santa Cathrina and Paraná Conference, and the setting apart of the province of São Paulo as a mission field, there still remained sixteen of Brazil’s provinces, which constitute the North Brazil Mission. Of these, four are inland, and twelve are coast provinces. And the coast line, from the most southern point of the Rio de Janeiro province to the most northern extremity of Pará, the province farthest north, covers about twenty-six hundred miles. In this field, and mostly along the coast, we have a population of seventeen million. The territory extends from twenty-three degrees south latitude to five degrees north latitude; and while it all lies in the tropics, cool and bracing climates are found on the high table-lands, three thousand and more feet above the sea-level.
In almost all these provinces the forests abound in many valuable varieties of wood, which form an important article of commerce. Also, great quantities of india-rubber are extracted from the india-rubber tree, and this is one of the chief industries of some sections of the north.
The country is also rich in minerals. Gold, lead, iron, zinc, copper, sulphur, saltpeter, and salt are found in abundance, also diamonds and other precious stones. Agriculture is, as a rule, carried on in rather a primitive manner. The articles generally raised are cacao, coffee, cotton, vanilla, tobacco, sugar-cane, rice, corn, legumes, sweet potatoes, and mandioca. Oranges and bananas are the principal fruits, although there are many other varieties. Cattle raising is carried on more or less extensively in all provinces, and carne seca (meat salted, and then sun-dried) forms one of the chief articles of interstate commerce.
The physical features of Brazil present many beautiful and picturesque sights. But as a rule the means of communication are very poor, which causes the work of the missionary to advance slowly, and to be very laborious. In many provinces almost the only manner of travel is by muleback; and even this at times and in many places is accompanied with dangers and hardships. I have known of travelers having to wait two weeks for a swollen stream to subside, in order to continue their journey; and not having within reach any food, they ate rawhide, to keep from starving.
THE MEMBERS OF THE RIO CHURCH
The dominant religion is the Roman Catholic. As is generally the case where this religion has held sway for centuries, ignorance, superstition, and vice abound. The lives of many priests are so dissolute that they have almost become a byword. The result is that the marriage relation is regarded in a very loose manner by the people. Often for trivial reasons married couples separate, each one taking another consort, and thus sin and misery multiply. To find people living in concubinage is a very common thing.
Yet into this land of darkness and sin the third angel’s message—the message that is to go to every kindred, nation, and tongue, to prepare a people for the Lord’s coming—has found its way. Still, as we think of only one minister in a field of seventeen million souls, scattered over such a vast territory, with such poor facilities for getting around among them, we are reminded of the saying that South America is the “neglected continent,” and can but earnestly pray to the Lord of the harvest that he will send more workers to help gather the grain for the heavenly garner; for we see that the work is growing more and more difficult as the years go by; and while men wait and sleep, the enemy is sowing tares that will soon bear a bountiful harvest, and bring about the conditions of Noah’s day.
But we have a beginning in this field. Here in Rio we have a church of about thirty members, while, all told, perhaps another twenty-five are keeping the Sabbath. In Espirito Santo we have three16organized churches and a number of scattered members, about one hundred thirty in all. In Mucury, the northern part of Minas Geraes, we have a church of forty members. Aside from this, in Bahia there are some observing the Sabbath and calling for baptism. I shall go to this place as soon as possible.
About two weeks ago a letter from a Brazilian in his seventy-fifth year, who is a student of the truth, brings an invitation to visit the province of Sergipe. To-day a letter brings intelligence that a young man, a native, who is in the employ of a missionary society, and is working in another part of the large province of Minas Geraes, is studying the truth, and has already accepted part of it. May this prove to be an instrument chosen of the Lord to assist in this last great closing work of the gospel.
The picture of the Rio church found on the preceding page was taken a few months ago. Two thirds of its members are natives. While we toil on, trusting in Israel’s God for victory, we are encouraged to know that loyal hearts are daily remembering us at the throne of grace. May the glad day hasten when, the battle ended, Immanuel, our Prince, shall lead his hosts in through the pearly portals of the New Jerusalem to enter into the rest there provided for them.
