p. 15 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 31. (8/3/1904)

Burlington Treatment Rooms

The Burlington treatment parlors have made arrangements to have Dr. Ball (formerly with the N. E. Sanitarium) make regular visits to its patients each week, thus affording, with our present facilities, all the requisites of a small sanitarium at home. We are thoroughly equipped with all the necessary apparatus to do effective work, and with our increased help feel free to call the attention of the Vermont people once more to our work here in Burlington.

Those desiring information as to prices, rooms, railroad connections, etc., address the manager, H. F. Litchfield, 308 N. Main Street, Burlington, Vt. Telephone, 358-11.

Medical communications sent to Dr. C. F. Ball, 80 Chestnut Street, Rutland, Vt. Telephone 52-4.

Excursion Rates

By G. T. Forsyth

ST. LOUIS

Round-trip Excursion Tickets to St. Louis and Chicago on sale July 1, 2, 7, 8, 13, 14; August 8, 9, 10, 18, 19; September 5, 6, 7, 8, and October 3, 4, 5, 6, at the following rates:—

To St. Louis - - - - - $67.50

To Chicago (Passing one way through St. Louis) - 72.50

Return limit, three months; stop-overs allowed on both going and returning trips. :: :: :: :: ::

THESE RATES GOOD ON OVERLAND LIMITED

Any agent will give you full details, or ask.

G. T. FORSYTH, Div. F. & P. Agent

12 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, Cal.

Southern Pacific

“The Home Over There”

We have sung about it, but do we all know where it is to be? See what page seven of the “Scripture References” says about it.

The price of the pamphlet is 2 cents, or $1.40 per hundred.

ADDRESS PUBLISHERS OF THIS PAPER

More About “Cobblestones”

By Editor

THE following letter appeared in Our Little Friend of July 1:—

Oakland, Cal., July 1, 1904.

To the readers of Our Little Friend:—

Dear Friends: Wouldn’t you like to introduce “Uncle Ben and His Cobblestones” to your friends?

“Of course we would,” is the answer we can almost hear from the 17,000 homes where this letter will be seen and read.

Well, Our Little Friend has a plan that will help you. Here it is: All of Uncle Ben’s stories you have read, and many more pictures than were printed with them, are being bound up in a beautiful book of more than 200 pages, called “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones.”

The price will be 75 cents, but we will mail it to you for 50 cents, if ordered during the month of July, with a promise to show the book to at least ten of your friends, telling them how much you have enjoyed it, and inviting them to buy for themselves.

If more than one order is received from one post-office, the first person ordering will have the choice of territory. Those sending in later must arrange with this person before we will furnish books at this price. So order early.

By this plan you will get your first book for 25 cents less than the regular price, even tho your friends do not buy; and if they do, we will see that you are paid for ordering the books, and delivering them.

Isn’t this an easy plan? Will you not try it?

Yours very truly,

OUR LITTLE FRIEND.

P. S. “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones” will not be ready until late in August, but orders for this sample book at this price must be sent in July.

As a result of this letter, we are receiving a great many requests from children for this sample book and an opportunity to sell it in their neighborhoods. Here are some of the letters:—

To Our Little Friend:—

I will send 50 cents for a sample of “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones,” and will promise to show to all I can. I always loved to read his stories, and love the Little Friend. I think it is the best paper for little ones printed. I am ten years old.

Dear Little Friend:—

Enclosed find fifty cents, for which please send “Cobblestones” to my little daughter Emma. We will gladly show it to ten of our friends, and try to sell to them. Those stories are worth printing, for, while they are interesting and instructive, they also draw the reader to Christ. May God bless them in their work for the little ones.

To Our Little Friend:—

I am glad to welcome your birthday. It hardly seems possible that you are so old, but the years come and go so fast.

Enclosed you will find P. O. note for “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones,” which we hoped would come in book form.

Our Dear Little Friend:—

Please find enclosed fifty cents, for which send me the little book, “Cobblestones,” when printed. I will show the book to as many of my friends as I can. I have enjoyed reading Uncle Ben’s stories very much. I nearly always looked for them first when we got the paper.

To Our Little Friend:—

I have read your letter in the last Little Friend about “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones,” so would like to try selling them. Enclosed you will find fifty cents, for which send me one book. I have been canvassing both last summer and this, and enjoy the work very much. I am twelve years old.

Dear Little Friend:—

Seeing your advertisement in the Little Friend for “Uncle Ben and His Cobblestones,” I send fifty cents for one. I will do all I can to sell them for you. It is a good story, and ought to be in every home.

To Our Little Friend:—

I saw in the Little Friend that you were putting “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones” in a book. I like to hear that, because I have given my little schoolmates all the Little Friends with “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones” in.

Well, we could go on and fill up the paper with these letters, but these are sufficient to show the interest in the book. As we stated last week, the regular price is 75 cents. The 50-cent offer has now expired, but to those who will solicit subscriptions liberal discounts will be given.

TO OUR PATRONS.

By Editor

Please be careful to write all names of persons and places plainly.

Send money by Post-office Money Order, Express Order, or Bank Draft on New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

Orders and Drafts should be made payable to the Pacific Press Publishing Co.

Paper money or silver should be sent in a registered letter.

Registered mail is safe. Unregistered mail is at the risk of the sender.

Postage-stamps in five or ten cent denominations will be accepted for small amounts.

The address label on your paper will indicate the time to which your subscription is paid. In case of non-receipt of papers, or any other irregularity, please notify us immediately.

When subscriptions expire, no more papers are sent to the party except by special arrangement.

You are requested to watch the date on your label, and renew early, and save the loss of papers. We cannot always furnish missing numbers.

When requesting change of address, be sure to give both old and new addresses.

Important.—If you order Signs, Our Little Friend, books, etc., at the same time, use a separate sheet of paper for each. If this request is complied with, it will materially assist in the prompt and accurate despatch of the business.

When writing to the editor, be sure to use a separate sheet of paper.

Only a Letter.

Only a letter, a private one, written in connection with an order, and yet how hopeful and courageous it sounds. Listen:—

To the Signs of the Times: Please find enclosed $2.00, for which kindly renew my subscription to your highly appreciated paper. How much it has done toward building me up in this precious truth, our Father only knows. It does seem strange, even to me, to be ignored and scorned by former friends. (I once was a leading Sunday-school teacher in this parish.) My aged mother and myself have the extreme honor of being the only Sabbath-keepers for miles around. Dear Jesus does give me opportunities to speak the truth, and write the truth, and, I trust, live the truth. For three quarters mother and I have belonged to the Home Department of the Sabbath-school, and study the lessons, which keep us in touch with our brethren, and by holding our home school every Sabbath afternoon we find ourselves most blessedly built up in present truth.

Yours, loving the message,

To the Signs of the Times,

Dear Friends: Some friend is sending me the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, and I am reading it with increasing interest.

I am very much interested in the second coming of Christ. I have been in the ministry for 35 years, and I am earnestly seeking to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing else but the truth.

Yours for the truth.

CAN THE SOUL DIE?

Some startling statements and scriptural conclusions on this subject will be found in the little work entitled, “Scripture References.” It is well worth a careful examination. . . . . . .

Price 2 cents each. $1.40 per hundred.

ADDRESS PUBLISHERS OF THIS PAPER.

An Explanation.

By Editor

In the SIGNS of June 1 an article appeared on Isa. 65:20 containing expressions which seem ambiguous at least, and should have been qualified or expunged. Some have thought that it taught a second probation, but that is precluded in the first paragraph. The second paragraph does not mean that God would punish the child for what the child never did, but, if the child had an essentially evil nature, one which could not inhabit heaven in happiness even to itself, it would simply die. But upon this question it is not best to speculate, for we know that the Judge of all the earth will do right; and all Christian parents may have the assurance that God will save their innocent offspring. All who are worthy to reach that better world, whether of responsible age, or irresponsible child, will there have a part, and we may leave it all with God. But we regret that the little article was published. It was not considered as it should have been in the manuscript. It is one of the evidences that editors are fallible.

The World's Great Need.

A recent despatch from London to the Toledo Blade tells us of a false christ in Somersetshire, England. He is nominally a preacher. He has worshipers from other lands, among whom is a “Russian countess, and many handsome young English women.” He sits on state occasions upon his throne, and before him bow his dupes, as he announces himself the “Lamb of God.” It is blasphemy, of course, but those who are deceived do not know it. Another man in Pennsylvania announces himself as “the last of the prophets,” who predicts the end of the world in 1908. Dowie has his worshipers, others in the world of wealth and politics have theirs. Not to this intent is God's message for this time. It will ascribe to poor fallen humanity no glory. The burden of His “everlasting Gospel” to-day is, “Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made the heaven and the earth.” There is no room for self-worship or worship of humanity there. The reception of such a message would root out utterly many of these last-day delusions. God alone is worthy of exaltation.

International Sabbath-School Lessons Discontinued

The “Signs of the Times” will discontinue the publication of the International Sabbath-School Lessons after this series. As there are but few who use the paper for the lessons, space is too valuable. The lessons for any quarter may be obtained in pamphlet form, worthy and easy of preservation, for 5 cents by addressing Pacific Press Publishing Co., Oakland, Cal.; after August 15, Mountain View, Cal.

Vegetarians Untroubled by Meat Shortage

Let the butchers strike, if they will, let the slaughter-houses close, let the purveyors of flesh shut shop, the intelligent vegetarian borrows no trouble. He whistles and sings as merrily to his work as tho the war of bloody men were not on. In fact, he is somewhat glad of the pinch in flesh-food supplies, hoping that some of “the riotous eaters of flesh” may learn that there is a better diet, a much better diet, of vegetables, grains, and fruits.

Human Government

Human government can never enforce God's Word, or law, or Sabbath; it can only enforce some man's conception of what God requires. Men of old, professing to be teachers of God, believed that Jesus Christ ought to die because He did not observe the Sabbath in the same way they observed it. There are religious teachers now who believe that men who keep the same Sabbath Jesus did ought to die because they do not observe a day which Jesus never observed. Should such teachers ever be entrusted with the power of Cæsar?

A Rotten “Bank.”

Mr. High, the bank commissioner of California, a news item informs us, has compelled a saloon in Santa Cruz to relinquish the name of “The Bank.” He decided that no saloon could masquerade under that name. Yet the saloon is a place of deposit, where money and houses and lands and ruined hopes and reputation and character are passed over the counter into its bottomless till. Mr. High may have recognized this, but it is his business to see that banks are solvent, able to pay depositors, and he knew, of course, that not one stiver of all that any depositor placed therein came back save in accursed negatives of all actual worth. He could not suppress the place of deposit, but he could demand that it should relinquish the name of a legal institution supposed to stand for honorable dealing. The news item further tells us that the saloon owners are wavering between two names, “The Banc” or “The Ban,” similar in sound to “The Bank.” The former would be appropriate in one of the applications the French give it, namely, a “reef,” on which ships go to wreck and everlasting ruin. The latter name would be the more appropriate, in its common meaning of “curse.” “The Ban” would also have a generic meaning as applying to all saloons; for they are always and everywhere an unmitigated curse, apart from all who may own them and run them, and who may be no better or worse than other men. By all means let the saloon be named “The Ban.” Such it is.

Religious Apostasy.

We quoted recently the statement of Prof. Goldwin Smith that “no small part of educated mankind has renounced, or is gradually renouncing, the hope of a future life, and acting on the belief that death ends all.” Count Tolstoy, after years of examination, tells us: “The educated wealthy minority have freed themselves from the church hypnotism, believe in nothing at all, and look upon every faith as an absurdity, or as merely a useful means of keeping the masses in subjection.” He says further:—

Never at any period of religious decline has the neglect and forgetfulness of the chief characteristic of all religion and of Christianity in particular—the principle of human equality—fallen to so low a level as it has descended to in our time. . . . There is no doubt that never in history was such material progress made in mastering the powers of nature as during the nineteenth century. But also there is no doubt that never in history was there such an example of immoral life, freed from any force restraining man’s animal inclinations, as that given by our ever-increasing, bestialized, Christian humanity. The material progress achieved in the nineteenth century has really been great; but that progress has been bought by such neglect of the most elementary demands of morality as humanity never before was guilty of, even in the days of Genghis Khan, Attila or Nero.

These are strong words, but they are true, and are in perfect harmony with the prophetic words of Scripture for this time. Conditions are increasingly evident that the world can not save itself, and it will not accept the One who can save it—Jesus Christ. Yet will He come, and He will save His own, gloriously, eternally, save all who will trust in Him. The increasing unbelief is an evidence that His coming is drawing nigh. He Himself asked, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?”

Typhoid Fever and Food.

There has been a large number of typhoid-fever cases in this city of late. Generally the sources of this disease are found in water and milk supplies. The Board of Health, believing this to be the case, has made diligent and searching investigation, and has found that both water and milk supply are free from contamination, in fact, that both stand high from a sanitary view-point. On still further investigation they found that the typhoid fever now prevalent is due to the consumption of uncooked foods, especially shellfish, such as oysters, shrimps, crabs, etc. The late epidemic of typhoid fever at Stanford University, Sanitary Inspector Gemmel informs us, was caused by the promiscuous eating of oysters and kindred kinds of fish. It was also found that green vegetables, which are served uncooked, also adapt themselves to propagating the deadly germs. Blessed is the man who finds sufficient food in well-cooked cereals, and in nuts and fruits.

The Secret of Life.

Prof. Jacques Loeb, of California University, in a recent lecture is reported as saying that “it is by no means certain that death, even in old age, can be called natural death.” And this the paper calls “new ideas concerning death.” Yet if we will read and believe the Bible we may know that normally no death is “natural.” God made man and all His creatures to live, not to die. All death comes from sin, perversion, transgression of law, a condition wholly unnatural and abnormal in God’s plan. When the great Alchemist by His creative power shall have banished sin, then “there shall be no more death.” The secret of life can not the wise men of Babylon solve; but obedience to God’s moral law in Christ Jesus will solve it to all eternity.

Greater Dignity to the Catholic Church in Porto Rico

Greater dignity to the Catholic Church in Porto Rico is reported in the Catholic Mirror. It says “the diocese of San Juan, in Porto Rico, is to be created an archdiocese, and that two new dioceses are to be created on that island; one at Ponce, and the other at Mayaguez. This report is attributed to his excellency Mgr. Chappelle, delegate apostolic to Cuba and Porto Rico.” The same paper also says that the religious orders of the Catholic Church in this country include 8,000 men and 50,000 women. This does not include many societies not strictly religious in character, but as devotedly Roman Catholic as the most religious order among them.

Prepared Peat as Fuel

“Popular Mechanics” tells us that the fuel of the future is prepared peat, which exists in different parts in great abundance. One-seventh of Ireland’s surface is covered with peat beds. From these beds Sweden uses 2,000,000 of peat briquettes annually. Unused fields exist within fifty miles of Chicago sufficient to last that city a century. A new method of preparation by electricity prepares the peat for fuel at the small cost of $1.21 a ton. “Prepared peat” is an almost smokeless fuel. It burns to the last vestige, leaves a clean, white ash, and no clinker.

Is America a Pagan Nation?

A Jesuit, writing to the Messenger, estimates that there are 50,000,000 people in this country who are unbaptized and non-Christian. He concludes “that we are not a Christian, but a pagan, nation.” And how far from right is he?

Vick’s Family Magazine

“Vick’s Family Magazine,” Rochester, N.Y., is helpful to all who are making home and garden beautiful. It is fifty cents a year.