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Review and Herald, Vol. 37, No. 11.

The Alarm
Earlier text: The Alarm

City Working Women.

To those girls and young women who have an unquenchable ambition to leave home and go to the city to learn trades, and become sewing girls, the following may be read with profit:—
“A few weeks since, the city papers related how a young lady had been arrested for pawning a sewing machine for which she had not yet paid. She bought it of one of the many firms who advertise machines, promising to furnish work to enable buyers to pay for them. The offer seemed good on the face; but the sequel showed too sadly the actual fraudulency of the arrangement. I know the lady well. Day by day she would pass me in the halls of our lodging place, looking more like a frightened ghost than anything earthly. I visited her in her room. It was an inner room, lighted only from the halls, such as we often see in our large public buildings. The only furniture she possessed, was her sewing machine and trunk. Her bed consisted of a mattress placed upon either a box or chairs. A few chairs belonging to the building had been lent her, and these completed the furniture of this room, where she toiled early and late, at her machine. She told me one day that, work as hard as she could, she could only make seventy-five cents per day. I know for some time her sole food was bread and milk, and that not too often. Her work was tucking skirts, and she usually managed to finish three a day, working late. She showed me one. It was tucked half way of the skirt, in half-inch tucks, and it seemed to me as if every tuck should have been marked indelibly, ‘One step nearer destruction.’ For so it was to her. When she found health and strength failing, and her face grew thinner each day, and the look in her eyes grew more wild and desperate; when her hope of anything better failed, she resorted to what many a poor, proud woman has done before—she pawned her machine, trusting in Providence for the help to enable her to redeem it. She did not mean to defraud her creditors; but they ascertained the facts at length, and she was arrested, imprisoned, and suffered everything a proud, sensitive nature could suffer under the circumstances. A friend assisted her at this point, and she was liberated on bail. The next we heard she had disappeared, and what part of the earth holds her poor, aching heart we do not know; but the memory of her white face will ever haunt me, as I wish it could ever follow and haunt those Shylocks of our city who wear out ‘human creatures’ in this unholy lust for gain. Cannot this matter be agitated once more in a more forcible manner than ever before? Ye who weep and groan over the steady and fearful growth of the ‘social evil’ among us, turn your philanthropic eyes to this one great cause of its growth. Regard this one evil in the light of a social upas tree, and uproot it in our midst, and thousands of hearts will thank you and bless you, and thousands of homes be made comfortable, where now lurk the fiends of want and their sister sin, waiting to seize upon their despairing prey.”—Ed.
THE TOILERS.—With the foregoing extract Bro. Clarke sends us the following thoughts:
How little do we think of the misery endured by the ill-fated daughters of misfortune, who are doomed to a life of toil in pent-up cities; whose wages are but an insult to humanity, and an aggravation to sorrow.
Why do not legislators take the matter in hand? and why do not community arise en masse, and vindicate, at least in some degree, the cause of those forlorn ones, who toil day and night, for only enough, and hardly that, to keep the breath of life in them? It is astonishing; it is shameful; it is almost unpardonable. If there is a soul in the public body, let us see it show itself.
JOS. CLARKE.

GOOD NATURE AT HOME.

No trait of character is more valuable in a wife than the possession of a sweet temper. Home can never be made happy without it. It is like the flowers that spring up in our pathway, reviving and cheering us. Let a man go home at night, wearied and worn out by the toils of the day, and how sweet is a word dictated by a sweet disposition! It is sunshine falling on his heart. He is happy, and the cares of life are forgotten. A sweet temper has a soothing influence over the minds of the whole family. When it is found in the wife and mother, you observe kindness and love predominating over the natural feelings of a bad heart. Smiles and kind words and love have their dwelling there. Study then to acquire and retain a sweet temper. It is more valuable than gold. It captivates more than beauty, and to the close of life retains all its freshness and power.

THE ISRAELITES CROSSING THE RED SEA.

Before them lay the restless deep, Behind the foeman pressed, And every face grew dark with fear, And anguish filled each breast, Save one, the leader’s, he serene Beheld with dauntless mind, The heaving deep outspread before, The foe that pressed behind.
“Why hast thou brought us forth for this?” The people loudly cry— “Were there no graves in Egypt’s land, That here we come to die?” Yet clear and calm above the din, Arose the prophet’s word, “Stand still, stand still, and ye shall see Salvation from the Lord.”
“Fear not, for they whom now ye see, Your eyes no more shall view; Peace to your fears! your fathers’ God This day shall fight for you; For Egypt in her haughty pride And stubbornness abhorred, This day in bitterness shall learn Jehovah is the Lord!”
He spoke, and o’er the Red Sea’s flood He stretched his awful wand; And lo! the startled waves retired Abashed on either hand, And, like a mighty rampart, rose To guard that narrow way, Mysterious that before the hosts Of ransomed Israel lay.
Oh! strange and solemn was the road, Which they were called to tread, With mysteries of the ancient deep Around their footsteps spread— With ocean’s unknown floor laid bare Before their wondering eyes, And the strange, watery wall that thus On either hand did rise.
Yet fearlessly with steadfast faith, Their leader led them on, While from behind a heavenly light Through the dread passage shone— Light for that lone and trembling band Beamed out with radiance clear, While Egypt’s host came groping on ’Mid darkness dense and drear.
’Tis past, and on Arabia’s coast The tribes of Israel stand, While fierce and fast Egypt’s host Approach that quiet strand; Though darkness like an awful veil Hangs o’er that dreadful path, Still on they desperately press In bitterness and wrath.
Then slowly once again arose The Hebrew prophet’s hand, And o’er the deep, again he stretched That strange, mysterious wand; The rushing waters closed in might Above that pathway lone, And Pharaoh, in his haughty pride, And all his host were gone.
Wail, Egypt, wail! thy crown of pride Is humbled in the dust, And thou, though late, art brought to know That Jacob’s God is just; And then, O! Israel, lift thy voice In one triumphant song Of praise to Him, in whom alone Thy feeble arm is strong. —Evangelical Witness.

Domestic Courtesy.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

BRO. MOODY, here is something good for you and the whole family. Call sister Moody and all the children together and read it aloud to them. Be sure to take your due share of it. When it hits you, stop and confess it, and resolve to reform.
“That genial and wholesome social critic, Mr. George William Curtis, the essayist of the Editor’s Easy Chair of Harper’s Magazine, takes for his texts in the new February number, the want of cheerful courtesy which is unhappily so common in our households. He thus draws the picture of what we fear must be admitted to be the average American home to-day:—”
“The family go about silent, or nodding, scolding, and snarling, and apparently without the least thought that they are to restrain any emotion, or the indulgence of any whim. Old clothes, shabby dressing-gowns, slippers, petulance, and selfishness, are quite good enough for the home. But if the same persons are to go out to call, or to dine, or to a ball, nothing is too pretty to wear, nothing too sweet to say, no politeness too fine to display.”
“Now, you young fellow at the table reading the evening paper, and nodding in a surly way to your mother and sister, take a test. If your clothes breathe a delicious fragrance—say of heliotrope or roses—but would do so only when you were at home, or only when you went abroad, which would you choose? Would you smell sweet at home, or when you went away from home? Would you have a perpetual climate of rare odors in your own house, or elsewhere? Of course you would have it at home, for your own comfort and enjoyment, you curmudgeon, if for nothing else. But what is domestic courtesy but the breath of heliotropes and roses at home? It is as much for your own pleasure that you should be pleasant as it is for that of others. The happiest household in the world is that in which the wishes of the thoughtful mother are made the laws of conduct, and where courtesy is new every morning and fresh every evening, like the celestial benediction.”
“How many of us, brethren and sisters, make home the rag-bag of ill-humors and caprices, and wretched moods of every kind, while we carefully hide them from the stranger? When the guest arrives, we slide a chair over the rent in the carpet, and slip a tidy over the worn edge of the sofa-cushion, and lay a prettily bound book over the ink stain on the parlor table-cloth; and so at his coming the flying hair is smoothed, and the sullen look is gilded with a smile, and the sour tone is suddenly wonderfully sweet. Shriveled old autumn blooms in a moment into rosy spring. And how, as this mother writes—how is a youth to know that this house, where everything seems to smile, is not always as warm and sunny as he finds it? Yet this young woman so neatly dressed, so quietly mannered, so fascinating to the young man, may be the most ‘inefficient’ of human beings.”
This is a fair description of many a family, even in the church. How will such families appear in Heaven? D. M. CANRIGHT.

WM. PENNIMAN

By Wm. Penniman

The Inconsistency of Those Who Hold the Bible as Their Only Rule of Faith and Practice.

THE following quotations from a work entitled, “Protestantism and Infidelity; an Appeal to Candid Americans, by F. H. Weninger, D. D., Missionary of the Society of Jesus,” pages 170, 257, show clearly not only that the papal church claims the power of changing positive institutions, but also of enacting new ones; and further it shows the inconsistency of those “Bible alone” Christians who so tenaciously cling to those ordinances of the church.
“Tell me why you baptize infants, though there is not a word about infant baptism in the whole Scripture; and why you do not wash one another’s feet, although Christ apparently commands the practice as necessary for salvation? Christ said to Peter, ‘If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me;’ and to all the apostles, ‘Ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.’ You administer infant baptism and omit the other practice, because the tradition of the Catholic church has taught you that the baptism of infants is necessary for their salvation, but the washing of one another’s feet was not commanded as an indispensable rule. Relinquishing the letter of the Bible on these points, and throwing yourself back on tradition, why do you maintain that the Bible is the only rule of faith?”
He further adds, “The church, by virtue of the power which she has received from Christ, abolished the Jewish Sabbath, and substituted Sunday in its stead, in commemoration of the most glorious mysteries of our redemption.”
Thus, in accordance with the tradition of the Roman church, those professing to be “Bible alone” Christians sprinkle infants because the tradition of the Catholic church has taught them that the baptism of infants is necessary for their salvation. They also omit the positive command to wash one another’s feet because tradition of the Catholic church has not commanded it as an indispensable rite. The daughters, also, like their mother, look upon the seventh-day Sabbath as Jewish, and virtually acknowledge that the papal power which has substituted Sunday in its stead is divine. Yet they cannot show one word of authority in the Bible for the change. Protestant writers admit that there is no command for the change, yet in harmony with the mother church, and inconsistent with their “Bible alone” creed, they sanction a counterfeit day.
What is there in the Bible to teach that the soul is immortal? Or what is there to prove that the wicked will be tormented in hell? Yet there are some who think that a belief in these doctrines should be made a test of church membership. I read an article in a popular religious newspaper which advocated the idea that no one should be admitted as a member of an orthodox church who did not believe in the endless punishment of the wicked. Perhaps the following quotation may yet form a part of this catechism, and be presented to those who desire church membership: “Dost thou believe that the punishment of the wicked will eternally increase, and that the happiness of the righteous will be increased on looking over the battlements of Heaven and beholding the eternal torments of the damned in hell?”
If the candidate like Sylvanus Cobb should say he was willing to forego that amount of happiness, the examiner might reply to him that he was a little tinctured with heterodoxy and could not be admitted. If the “woes of some will make others happy,” as Dr. Beecher teaches, the preceding question is no exaggeration of their doctrine. And Prof. Finney declares that their “punishment will eternally increase.” Such are some of the extreme inconsistencies of orthodoxy.

WM. PENNIMAN

Woodburn, Ill., Feb., 1871.

Couple Heaven with It.

An aged Christian had paused to rest himself as he trudged along under a heavy load on a warm summer day. An acquaintance had just accosted him, when a splendid carriage rolled past, in which a haughty man rode, whose whole appearance bespoke a life of luxurious ease. “What do you think of the Providence of which you sometimes speak?” said an acquaintance. “You know that that is a wicked man; yet he spreads himself like a green bay-tree. His eyes stand out with fatness; he is not plagued as other men; while you, believing that all the silver and gold is the Lord’s, serving him and trusting in his providence, and toiling and sweating in your old age, get little more than bread and water. How can you reconcile this with a just Providence?”
The aged saint looked at the questioner with amazement, and, with the greatest earnestness, replied: “Couple Heaven with it! couple Heaven with it, and then?” Yes, that addition sweetens many a bitter cup, and enriches many a poor lot. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.”—Times of Refreshing.

Reputation and Character

REPUTATION is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and angels know of us.

In Memoriam.

By M. W. Howard

“THERE are deaths that come upon us, with a sense of a completed harmony; deaths that end life, as sunset ends the day; deaths when the work is done, when the story is all told, when the long, full day's travel is finished. Patiently as the years passed, the appointed duty is fulfilled, the prescribed burden borne. And now at last, all finished, death comes to summon the laborer to his rest.”
Long and silently I mused, as I read the above. A tender chord in my own heart, vibrated the response, Yes!; and these are deaths to thank God for, deaths that end a long and fruitful life, with a perfect close.
Then I recalled the sudden dispatch, which hastened me to my mother’s bedside; where in quiet sadness I sat two nights and the intervening day, ere that life, which had been so dear to me, went out forever. I reviewed the scene, when by the help of kind hands, that form was prepared for its long rest; remembered making ready the habiliments for burial, and enrobing the body for the grave; for God had folded her hands in everlasting rest; and,
“Through the long and dreamless night, She’ll sleep till morning; then arise, And angel guard, on pinions bright, Shall safely bear her to the skies.”
Turning then to other duties, how comforting to find how faithfully and well was all her work completed. It is only now and then, when the life-work drops from busy hands, that there can come unbidden to the heart, a sense of completeness. Here it was so. But mingled therewith was an accusing consciousness, that too much had been performed by her. Is it always thus, when the mother is gone? the mother, who is so often untiring in assiduities, unflinching in self-imposed tasks, and shrinking not from tasks imposed by others, not even when the need of appreciation is withheld? And is so cheap a meed ever withheld? What is the experience of such as voluntarily assume the service of others, in this unsatisfying, ungrateful world? I felt these questionings swell and surge through my inmost soul, proving—
. . . . “’Tis true, the heart can feel What words can never, never tell.”
But the meed is not always withheld; for the unsought testimony of one who had known her long and well, was, that were herself required to accomplish the work performed by her who was gone, she must needs live an hundred years! Her numerous children were reared, and had long been in homes of their own; but her kind ministrations had never ceased. In her department was found no unfinished work, no sewing begun, but laid aside incomplete, as the last sickness came on; but the finished garments were there, bearing marks of recent completion, garments anticipating the coming wants of him for whom it was her duty to care.
And I thought—just as of old, her work even with her time; aye, ahead of her time. Dead, yet speaking”; and I recalled words of hers, familiar in childhood, with which she used to animate me for my work: “Never let your work drive you; always drive your work, and then it will be easy.” Herein, I am confident, lay the secret of her executive ability; and though one might often hear her say that “work was driving,” yet I am sure that she always retained the helm.
How fitting, then, that a rest should come—a rest discharging from all the concerns of this life, a rest that received the benedictions of the poor and needy—a rest for which to thank God, believing her works shall follow, and that her reward is sure. M. W. HOWARD.
Moline, N. Y., Jan., 1871.

The Poisoned Tongue.

It is a custom in Africa for hunters, when they have killed a poisonous snake, to cut off its head, and carefully bury it deep in the ground. A naked foot stepping on one of these fangs would be fatally wounded. The poison would spread in a very short time all through the system. This venom lasts a long time, and is as deadly after the snake is dead as before. Cruel Indians used to dip the points of their arrows in this poison—so, if they made the least wound, their victim would be sure to die. The poison of the snake is in its teeth; but there is something quite as dangerous, and much more common in communities, which has its poison on its tongue. Indeed, your chances of escape from a serpent are greater. The worst snakes usually glide away in fear at the approach of man, unless disturbed or attacked. But this creature, whose poison lurks in his tongue, attacks without provocation, and follows up its victim with untiring perseverance. I will tell you his name, so you may be able to shun him. He is called Slanderer. He poisons worse than a serpent. Often his venom strikes to the life of a whole family or neighborhood, destroying all peace and confidence.

No Matter in What Way.

Two confessors of Christ, during the reign of King Henry VIII, were threatened with martyrdom by the Lord Mayor of London. He told them unless they gave up what he considered their errors he would tie them in a bag and have them thrown into the Thames. They replied: “My Lord, we are going to Heaven, and it matters very little whether we go there by land or water.”

Time to Commence the Sabbath.

A CORRESPONDENT asks for a concise statement of the evidence respecting the time to commence the Sabbath. We shall but state a fact which must be in accordance with every one's sense of propriety, when we say that the Sabbath must be observed according to the Bible method of reckoning days.
Inquiry 1. When does the day commence according to Bible reckoning? It begins at even, which, as will hereafter appear, is at the setting of the sun.
Proof. Lev. 23 : 32 : “It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls; in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even shall ye celebrate your sabbath.” But, says one, this was the day of atonement, and has nothing to do with the weekly Sabbath. Very true; but it was nevertheless a particular day of the month, and being such, it is a guide to the reckoning of all other days. It was the tenth day of the month, and was to be wholly regarded as a day of rest, from the even of the ninth day to the even of the tenth. Now if this was not the usual method of reckoning the days, then it was not one particular day of the month, but a part of two days. Thus if the days commenced then, as now, at midnight, from the ninth day of the month at even, would be a portion of the ninth day, and the tenth day to even, would be only a portion of that day; so that the day of atonement, instead of being the tenth day of the month, as the Lord commanded that it should be, would be a part of the ninth and tenth days. It is thus sufficiently evident that every day of the month, and consequently every day of the week commenced with even.
Inquiry 2. When is even? It is at the setting of the sun.
Proof. Mark 1 : 32 : “And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils.” Why were not these afflicted ones brought to Christ before the setting of the sun on this day? Because it was the Sabbath; see verse 21; and their traditions did not allow them to bring their sick to be healed on that day. Matt. 12 : 10; Luke 13 : 14. But as soon as that day ended, which was when the sun did set, then they brought unto him all that were afflicted, and he healed them. So this text shows not only that even was at the setting of the sun, but also that that was the point where one day ended and another commenced.
Deut. 16 : 6 : “But at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun.”
Lev. 22 : 6, 7 : “The soul which hath touched any such shall be unclean until even, and shall not eat of the holy things, unless he wash himself with water; and when the sun is down, he shall be clean.”
Deut. 23 : 11 : “But it shall be when evening cometh on, he shall wash himself with water; and when the sun is down, he shall come into the camp again.”
These texts are explicit on the point that even is at the setting of the sun. Those who wish to follow the subject still farther may examine these additional texts: Josh. 8 : 29; 10 : 26, 27; Judges 14 : 18; 2 Sam. 3 : 35; 2 Chron. 18 : 34; Matt. 8 : 16; Luke 4 : 40.
The Bible reckoning of days is further shown by the record of the first week of time; for the reckoning of that week necessarily determines that of all the rest; and if we can determine how days were reckoned then, we know how they should be reckoned still. The record states that the evening and the morning were the first day. The marginal reading, “And the evening was, and the morning was,” does not at all change the sense; for if we say the evening was and the morning was, the first day, it is just the same as saying, And the evening and the morning were the first day. It took the evening and the morning, the period of darkness and the period of light, to make the day of twenty-four hours; and the darkness came first; the day commenced with the evening.
On the word day, Dr. Hales, Chron., vol. i. p. 10, remarks: “The evening and the morning were the first day.” Gen. 1 : 5. Here the word ‘day’ denotes the civil or calendar day of twenty-four hours including the ‘evening,’ or natural night, and the ‘morning,’ or natural day; while the sun is either below or above the horizon of any place, in the course of the earth’s diurnal rotation between two successive appulses of the same meridian to the sun: corresponding, therefore, to a solar day in astronomy. It is remarkable that the ‘evening’ or natural night precedes the ‘morning,’ or natural day, in the Mosaic account. Hence the Hebrew compound, ‘evening-morning’ is used by the prophet Daniel, to denote a civil day, in his famous chronological prophecy of the 2300 days. Dan. 8 : 14. And also the Greek compound, νυχθήμερον, to denote the same. And hence Hesiod, the oldest of the Greek poets that have reached us, represents the occultation of the Pleiades as lasting νύκτας τε καὶ ἡμέρας τεσσαράκοντα, ‘forty nights and days,’ that is, calendar days. And following the primeval order, the ancient Gauls and Germans counted times and seasons by the number of nights, not of days; as we learn from Cæsar and Tacitus; a usage still retained by their descendants; for in old French, annuit signifies to-day; and in English, sevennight, fortnight, ‘seven nights,’ ‘fourteen nights.’ Thus is sacred history verified by primitive tradition, handed down to the present time; ‘the night seeming to usher in the day.’”
In accordance with the foregoing plain Scripture proof upon this subject, it is not strange that we find all authorities agreeing that the Jews began their days at sunset.
Kitto. “The Jewish civil day began, as it still does, not with the morning, but the evening—thus the Sabbath commences with the sunset of Friday and ends with the sunset of Saturday.” Cyclopædia, art. Day.
Bloomfield. “The Sabbath had ended when the sick were brought” . . . “after sunset.” Note on Matt. 8 : 16.
Am. Tract Society’s Bible Dictionary. “The Hebrews began their day in the evening.”
Cruden. “The Hebrews began their civil and ecclesiastical day from one evening to another.”
To these we might add the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Angus’ Bible Hand-book, Smith’s Bible Dictionary, and we know not how many others, all testifying to the same point.
Continue reading: Thoughts on the Book of Daniel