p. 256 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 16. (4/28/1914)

Graduation Day Gifts

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Steps to Christ

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The Liquor Evil

DR. LUCIUS BROWN, the head of the Tennessee Pure Food and Drug Department, comes out with the statement that this country is "far worse drug-ridden than China." So far, 1,360 "dope fiends" have registered with the state department, and the doctor calculates that the number registered represents only about one tenth of the drug users of the state. This peril of doping with drugs is very closely related to the parent peril — the liquor evil.

THE Pittsburg chapter of the American Institute of Banking has unanimously adopted resolutions condemning the liquor business. Attention is called, in the preamble of their resolution, to the city of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where the saloons became such a nuisance that the county court revoked twenty-seven saloon licenses. A great decrease in crime was noted after this court decision; and three banks in the city of Coatesville showed a gain in their deposits, after the refusal of licenses, of over $2,000,000; and the county commissioners were able to reduce the county taxation from two and one half mills to two mills, or a reduction, in other words, of twenty per cent. The challenge is thrown out again and again for any one to come forward and say a single truthful thing that would be favorable to the saloon. There is absolutely nothing that can be said in its favor, and the facts are piled up around us like mountain ranges of evidence calling for its suppression.

THE Journal of the American Medical Association calls attention to the dangers of overdoing in athletic sports. Exercise in athletics may be overdone in such a way as to destroy permanently the physical efficiency of the individual, rather than to build it up. Physical training should be taken under the instruction of a competent director. And we might also state that the men who are connected with our agricultural experiment stations and other industrial enterprises can give the best physical training — a training that is the most useful and that will at the same time build the body up in the most healthful, symmetrical manner. There is no better physical developer than good, honest toil properly understood and properly enjoyed.

SOME 35,000,000 copies of the Bible have been put into circulation in China, and the two corresponding secretaries of the American Bible Society offer the suggestion that "possibly an impression that the empire is being flooded with Bibles was one reason for an official affirmation of Confucianism as a religion of the Chinese republic." But Confucianism will be taken at a great disadvantage in the struggle, for the reason that the writings of Confucius are in the classical form of the Chinese, and understood by the educated only, while the Bible is in the language of Him whom the common people heard gladly. Our Bible societies should be encouraged in their great work of earnestly circulating the sacred Scriptures.

ON April 4, Frederick W. Weyerhaeuser, the big lumber king, died at his winter home near Los Angeles, at the age of seventy-nine. He has not been talked about in the same way that Mr. Rockefeller has, but he has nevertheless been a close rival of Mr. Rockefeller in the amassing of a great fortune. How many hundreds of millions he was actually worth it would be difficult to tell, but it is quite probable that his holdings represent in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. He began life in poverty, and is one of the conspicuous examples of the great amassing of wealth that one man may accomplish in these days, within his single lifetime.

THE Lackawanna Railway Company is making extensive experiments with wireless apparatus to be used in the operation of their trains. In one of the snow-storms recently, when all the telegraph wires had been broken down, a wireless apparatus on a snow-bound train reported the whereabouts and the condition of the train, and by wireless communication, though in a somewhat roundabout way, they were able to send relief that got the train out of that condition some forty-eight hours earlier than could have been done without this.

DR. CARREL, at the recent meeting of the American Surgical Society at the Hotel Astor, New York City, presented some very interesting facts in regard to experiments in surgery of the heart he has been performing upon dumb animals, and he believes that surgery on the human heart can now be safely attempted. This will be a great advance step in the healing art.

The Menace of Cancer

THE recent meeting of the noted surgeons of the country in New York City gave considerable study to the report of the American Society for the Control of Cancer. It was claimed that radium, which has given great promise of help in curtailing the increase of cancer, was proving a failure. Dr. Wood, director of the cancer research at Columbia University, says a surgical operation is the only cure, and that these other treatments are merely temporary or palliative. Dr. William H. Mayo, the surgeon of international fame from Rochester, Minnesota, "gave us a ray of hope that a change in the habits and customs of the people may reduce the disease."

Quite a number of the foremost doctors of the world are reaching the conclusion that the increased consumption of meat is responsible for the rapid increase of cancer. This malady stands next to tuberculosis in the list of fatal diseases; and if its present increase continues, it will soon stand at the head.

Many people believe that they have to eat meat in order to live, but this is a great mistake. The greatest strength and the greatest immunity from disease come to the one who knows how to use intelligently the fruits, the grains, and the vegetables that are so abundantly supplied. The use of meat is increasingly dangerous, because of the many butchers who are so unscrupulous as to slaughter animals that are breaking down under disease, and place their infected carcasses on the market for the people to eat.

Shall the Churches Run Pool-Rooms?

By John Orcutt Corliss

AND now comes the reputed statement from Ohio, through the Los Angeles Herald of April 6, that the Rev. J. L. Boyer, pastor of Collinwood Methodist Church, said this: "The day of the old-fashioned sedate church has passed. If I had my way, we would have pool-tables and a smoking-room for our men members."

If this is really the sentiment of the reverend gentleman, why would he exclude women members of the church from the men's privileges? If no harm follows pool and smoking-room practise for men church-members, why should it be closed to women members? There must be some reason.

Is it not well known that the pool-room is parent to gambling devices? And if smoking is to be recommended for the church pool-room, why is that not following the world's practise, and why may not the drink habit creep into the place, since it is an accompaniment of such worldly resorts?

Could a church pool-room truly be kept exclusive, admitting only church-members, when it so nearly harmonizes with just what the world wants?

But why ask further such leading questions? Is it not clearly evident, from wide-spread and growing sentiment, that the church is not, as at one time, a place exclusively for praise and prayer? Who can not see in this a fulfilment of 2 Tim. 3:1-5? Can we not also discern the signs of the times in the fulfilment of Matt. 24:37-39? "Flee these things," O man of God! J. O. C.

Will Anarchy Soon Subside?

By Editor

A NEW YORK paper compares the anarchistic utterances now made in New York and elsewhere to the conditions that brought about the Haymarket riots in Chicago in 1886, but offers the hopeful suggestion that just as the leaders in that riot were tried and executed, so will the leaders in these present movements be summarily handled. It may be very desirable to say things that have a tendency to allay the nervousness of many people because of present-day conditions; but it is well for us, at the same time, to look the situation squarely in the face.

This world is agitated from side to side by discontented people who are earnest in their cause, and who believe that they have unbearable grievances, and who are also sure that these grievances are not occasioned by a diseased imagination, but are based upon the indisputable facts of their every-day experiences. The extremists among the aggrieved are continually uttering revolutionary and even anarchistic statements; but these few extreme radicals to one side, there still remains the vast army of discontented men and women who are ready to do and to dare in order that they may better their conditions. And we are greatly beside ourselves if we believe that this is something that will soon blow over and that can readily be remedied. If men will awake from their dream, they ought to be able to see that the world has even now reached a point where supernatural power is the only hope of terminating conditions that now threaten.

Principles versus Personalities

THE despatches of April 5 tell of more than fifty men who went to a hotel in Denver where a preacher by the name of Spurgeon was staying, and taking him from his room, placed him in an automobile, carried him twenty-four miles north of Denver, gave him $2.10, and told him to "hit the track." His offense was that he had "angered many persons in Denver through his attacks on the Catholic priesthood."

Attacks might be made upon the priesthood or the ministry of almost any church. There are defective men in all religious organizations; but in defending the doctrines of Protestantism against Catholicism, we gain nothing by descending to personalities and seeking to point out corrupt characters that may be found in the papal church. The question should be lifted above all such personal combat, and placed upon the strong ground of the failure of the Catholic Church to teach the pure and simple gospel of Jesus Christ. That church holds out a false hope in leading men to believe that the church itself can save them. It keeps men from becoming acquainted with Christ and the divine Father of the Bible, by impressing it upon them that the Bible is unsafe in the hands of the common people.

The good Book says that the common people heard Christ gladly, and the common people may just as gladly hear and understand His divine word. But when it comes to iniquities and hypocrisies in private life, there is no church that has a monopoly upon that sort of thing. The teaching of Protestantism should be of such a character as to lead the people to taste for themselves the joys of a personal knowledge of the divine Book. The positive teaching of the doctrines of the Bible, including the prophecies which present the clear evidences of Christ's soon coming, will do more to lead people away from false doctrines than all the personal thrusts that can be given by battling theologians.

"Advised to Steal"

By Editor

A DESPATCH from Boston dated March 8 got into the newspapers under the heading, "Idle Are Advised to Steal." Under date of March 14 a despatch from New York City got into the papers under the same heading, "Idle Are Advised to Steal."

The telegram from New York was concerning the Siegel bank and store failures, and states that the agitators advised the suddenly discharged ex-employees to steal. The despatch from Boston tells us of a mass-meeting where the speaker urged the idle to help themselves to anything they were in need of.

It has not been so very long since statements of that kind openly made and urged by public speakers would have attracted much attention, and would have met with very severe censure from practically everybody. But such things are now becoming so common that our danger is that we will think they amount to nothing and we will sleep on until the great revolutionary storm breaks upon us in all its fury. We ought to be awake to these things, and sense what they mean.

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By G. C. Hoskin

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