p. 320 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 20. (5/18/1915)

What Makes the Horse Laugh??

He has just heard his master say, “One cannot do a hard day’s work without the aid of alcoholic drink.” — Temperance Instructor.

Cartoons drive the point home, don’t they? In some ways even better than words. There are sixty-four of them in the new 128-page temperance book,

“The Shadow of the Bottle”

With the aid of the cartoonist, the statistician, and the lecturer, it tells the story of crime, bloodshed, and wretchedness resulting from the liquor traffic.

Better result-producing literature than “THE SHADOW OF THE BOTTLE” cannot be found. 25c a single copy postpaid.

A special 12½c (carriage extra) rate is given on all orders of ten or more copies to one person. See the following parcel post rates for the first, second, and third zones from our representatives in your state.

	POSTPAID
	1st and 2d zones	3d zone
10 copies, 5 lbs.	$1.35	$1.40
25 copies, 11 lbs.	$3.25	$3.40

All orders and communications should be sent to our representative in your state. See list on page 14.

PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING ASSN., Mountain View, Cal.

More Fascinating than Fiction

THE ADVANCE GUARD OF MISSIONS

APPRECIATIONS

“Our young people need missionary biography, and I hope this is just the book that will inspire them to go and do likewise.”

“It is indeed intensely interesting. I am sure that it will awaken the people's interest in missions—not only the young, but the older ones as well.”

“I do not see how it can fail to stir up a missionary spirit in those who read it, whether old or young.”

Do you know Marcus Whitman, the missionary physician to the American Indians? His famous ride from Oregon to the nation's capital in the dead of winter, visit to President Tyler and Secretary Webster in a garb of wild animal skins, recruiting of 1,000 emigrants, and return to the West and his beloved Indians, are all told in one of the chapters.

Multiply this fascinating, helpful story by fifty, and you get some idea of the value of the book from an interest-sustaining standpoint alone.

In this 347-page book, you learn of some of the providences of God, and of the wonderful work done by John Eliot, David Brainerd, the Wesleys, Christian Schwartz, William Carey, Robert Morrison, the Judsons, Dr. John Scudder, Robert and Mary Moffat, David Livingstone, J. Hudson Taylor, William Miller.

Prized by those who have a copy. Your library is incomplete without a good missionary biography like “Advance Guard of Missions.”

In two styles: handsome red cloth, heavy paper, $1.65; plain cloth, $1.10. Prices 10% higher in Canada.

Order through our representative in your state. See list on page 14.

PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA

VACATION TIME

Go where you will — to the country, sea-shore, or mountains.

Do what you will — work, play, or merely rest.

Your enjoyment will be immensely greater if you slip into your “grip” a copy of

Out of Doors

Its ninety-seven pages are filled with a spirit of enthusiasm for outdoor life. Unconsciously you get an inspiration to cultivate health. The writer, in a breezy style, makes it clear that genuine happiness and health are to be found in the morning walk, garden making, camping, and other open-air recreations.

This 60c (10% more in Canada) book will be worth dollars to you. Get a copy and read it. You will wish to give it a second reading.

May be secured from any of our representatives. See list on page 14.

PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING ASSN.

Mountain View, California

Becoming the Theme of Discussion

ONE of the early writers in connection with this great advent movement said: “God means that testing truth shall be brought to the front, and become a subject of examination and discussion, even if it is through the contempt placed upon it. The minds of the people must be agitated. Every controversy, every reproach, every slander, will be God’s means of provoking inquiry, and awakening minds that otherwise would slumber.”

The Bible student readily understands that the second coming of Christ is one of the most prominent doctrines in the sacred Book. It is the central theme of divine inspiration from the days of Enoch, before the Flood, until the time of John on the Isle of Patmos.

During this generation, thousands of persons, from the study of the prophecies of the Bible, have reached the conclusion that nothing can be more clearly demonstrated than that the second coming of Christ is very near. The teachers of this doctrine used to be ridiculed more or less everywhere; but a remarkable change is now coming over the world, and in every part of it men are rising up to proclaim the second coming of Christ. In some instances, they are telling the story as the Bible tells it. In many other instances, they have vague and fanciful notions concerning it, that are unscriptural and consequently untrue.

But nevertheless, in harmony with the prediction made at the beginning of these paragraphs, the subject is coming to the front, and becoming the theme of discussion. Toward the latter part of April, in southern California, a discussion on the second coming of Christ was held between the pastor of one of the churches and an attorney from New York. The reports of the discussion occupied whole pages in the leading dailies of Los Angeles, the distinguished metropolis of southern California. Thousands upon thousands of people earnestly discussed the subject. In this way, their attention is called to the prophecies of the Bible; and furthermore, every honest-hearted soul is having the opportunity to study for himself the insuperable evidence of the divine Book, which discloses the great truth that Jesus of Nazareth is soon coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Seeking Peace by Force

By J. W. H.

JAMES L. BARTON, D. D., recently made this interesting statement, which received prominent place in a great religious magazine: “This war is irresistibly leading to the conclusion that the only civilization which will meet the requirements of this century and of the generations to follow is that which receives its sanction and guaranty from a Christian world federation for universal good order and protection.”

Such a federation, in which a leading place could not be denied to the Catholic Church, might be able to bring powerful pressure to bear on belligerents, but it would inevitably defeat its own purpose. War is an unavoidable product and accompaniment of human politics; and when the church organizes itself as a political factor, to the extent of compelling a civilization to receive from it “sanction and guaranty,” it will soon find itself involved in the war, strife, and intrigue of states. History has shown us that when church interferes with state, both become degraded. Politics have never been so bloody and corrupt as when dominated by a religious system. Christ did not give to the church a commission to judge and control the state. That authority He has reserved for Himself.

If the ideals of Christ are to rule the world, it will not be because the church takes the short cut of coercion to impress them upon civilization. It will be because she patiently upholds these ideals and lives them out in long-suffering until the time when Christ Himself comes to “judge the world in righteousness,” and “minister judgment to all the peoples in uprightness.”

Nevertheless, we may look for this organized religious influence, for the purpose of controlling the state, to be gradually built up; partly by well-wishing men, partly by men of evil designs. The God of heaven foretold through His prophet, eighteen hundred years ago, that this very movement of men would be one of the last developments to precede His personal return to the earth.

J. W. H.

Christianity and the War

THE following from the Ladies’ Home Journal for March is worth more than a mere passing note. It states the relation of Christianity to the barbarous war now raging in Europe. The editor of the Journal says:

“It is man who is on trial: not God: not Christianity. When we speak of ‘Christian nations’ being at war, we speak wrongly. There is no such thing as a Christian nation. If Germany or France or England were a ‘Christian nation’ it would not be at war: it would be impossible. There are Christian men and women in those nations, but there are not enough of them. There is where we have been wrong: our count of Christians has not been right.

“This is an excellent time for us all to do some individual thinking and stock taking: to take an inventory of our own impulses: our own thoughts: our own actions. Are our human relations right: our relations with those nearest us? When the individual is right then the nation will be right. Meantime God is right and stands ready to make men right. His truth and love are the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever. It is man who is wrong. That is why we have war.”

The Vision of Prophets and Bards

By J. W. H.

THERE is a widespread feeling among the people of the world that the era of peace must soon come. It is but natural that in the midst of a war the sinfulness of which seems to be realized most by us who are farthest away from it, our longing for the golden age of peace and brotherhood which has been predicted by seers and prophets through the centuries should become most intense.

What men desire, they hope for; and what they hope for, they soon come to expect.

But a federation of governments, or a human world government, founded on the unavoidable principle of human politics that might makes right, can never bring the era of righteousness. For so many ages civilizations have arisen and developed only to deteriorate again, that men are constrained to look to a higher power than earthly politics for the betterment of their condition.

There are no redundant strokes in the statecraft of God. Christ is coming because the world needs His advent, and would be hopeless without it.

J. W. H.

The European War and the Meat Market

THE Wall Street Journal says: “When the war closes, the demand for meat will be world-wide. Whence can it be filled? Increase of South American sources, and the development of new supplying countries, will take time. Millions of men hitherto unused to meat diet will have acquired the meat habit. Population grows. The future of meat supplies will be one of the greatest problems after the war.”

Doubtless on the part of many there will be an increased demand for meat. But on the other hand, there are a rapidly increasing number of people who have learned from experience and observation that the human family is better nourished without meat than with it; and while, as suggested by the Journal, the European war is teaching many people to use meat who heretofore had not eaten it, yet there are many others who are getting the lesson, from this war, that meat is not necessary.

The use of meat is one of the most unscientific and useless habits in which the human family can indulge. The ox and the sheep feed on vegetation; and then the meat eater, in eating their flesh, has to take secondhand food. It is far better for the human family to learn how to live from the vegetable kingdom. It takes a little training to teach one to nourish the system properly with fruits, grains, and vegetables; but once it is learned, the individual is far better off, as thousands of persons can testify.

Making a Jest of Decency

The tastes of the people are shown by the pictures they enjoy, the songs that they sing, and oftentimes by the “jokes” that they tell. There is no class of jokes, cartoons, or pictures in these times that are more eagerly sought or that receive a wider distribution than those which make light of the marriage relation.

Many editors that talk eloquently and volubly of the “high moral tone” of the age in which we are living, and of our “great material progress and advancement,” will permit cartoons and jokes to appear in their papers which make unfaithfulness to the marriage vow a mere matter of fun and merriment. A generation that will tolerate such things, to say nothing of enjoying them, is already well along in the decaying condition of vice that must surely end in ruin.

We are indeed in an age of great material progress. It is an age of marvelous achievement. And there is danger that we may allow the glitter of these things to blind our eyes to the fact that we are also in an age of great moral degeneracy: an age when vice, sensuality, and debauchery are dragging the human family rapidly to destruction. Men ought to see these things; and if they would carefully read and study their Bibles, they would know what they mean.

“The Mailed Hand and the Nailed Hand”

IN which power do you most profoundly believe—physical force or sacrificial service? Which is your idea of a “holy war”—that of the Moslem armies or the Christian missionary? Is your ideal the mighty monarch of the mailed fist, or the Christ pouring out His lifeblood for mankind on Calvary? Is your program of sacrifice one represented by that of others, or your own living sacrifice for others? The hand mailed with steel may win battles, but it will never win the world. The hand nailed to the cross may seem to betoken defeat, but it is the hand of the Lifted-up One—who will draw all men unto Himself.—Missionary Review.

“The Prince of Rome”

THE kindly feeling between the government of Italy and the Vatican is indicated by a little circumstance of late. The king’s children are all baptized into the Catholic Church, and the three older have recently been confirmed. When his oldest son, Humbert, was baptized, the Masonic party of Italy urged that he be called “prince of Rome;” but out of deference to the pope, the king would not yield to the request. His title is, prince of Piedmont. The pope claims the title of prince of Rome.

War’s Enormous Cost and Coming Trouble

The total expenditures of the belligerent nations of Europe are $42,150,000 a day. It is easy to see that such an enormous waste must soon end in bankruptcy, and bankruptcy will be followed by sufferings and discontents that will produce such scenes of rioting and violence as this world has never yet known. We are very closely confronted by that time viewed by the prophet Daniel when he says, “There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.”

Explanatory Note

By M. E. Olsen

BY courtesy of the editor, the work of getting out this number of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has been done by the students in the advanced English classes of Washington Missionary College. Mr. Josef Hall and Mrs. Eva Bowen Nelson, members of the class in college literature, have acted as editor and associate editor. Mr. Roland Loasby, Mr. Henry Brown, and Miss Ella Iden, members of the class in advanced rhetoric, have assisted in the work of preparing the copy for the press. The other articles, with the exception of the one by Elder G. B. Thompson, contributing editor, have been written by pupils in these and other English classes of the college.

It is only fair to add that the paper in its present form is the product of class effort, the instrument placing on the pupils the responsibility for the selection of the topics and for the preparation of the manuscript. It goes without saying that they have benefited by this unique opportunity of putting into practice the principles of effective writing. That the paper may convey a message of hope and good cheer to all who read it, and may make for a clearer, fuller knowledge of one of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian church, is the prayer of the writers.

M. E. Olsen,

Head of the Department of English.