p. 13 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 23. (6/16/1909)

The Missionary Idea

By Mrs. A. E. Ellis

BY MRS. A. E. ELLIS

This little volume aims to be a suggestive help to every missionary worker whose heart has been touched with a sense of the world's need.

Part One is designed to stimulate a healthy interest in missionary work, both “Home” and “Foreign.” Each of the 16 subjects is arranged in the form of a “Lesson” with carefully prepared questions.

Part Two consists of contributed, selected, and arranged matter which, besides its inspiring character, will suggest to the thoughtful reader ways in which missionary information may constantly be gathered and missionary sentiment encouraged.

Part Three gives an outline of the work done in mission fields since 1874, with a brief history of each mission and outline map of the more important.

317 pages in two handsome bindings. Paper covers 50c. Cloth bound $1.00, post-paid

Pacific Press Publishing Association

Mountain View, Cal.

Portland, Ore. Regina, Sask., Can. Kansas City, Mo.

Do It Now

By Editor

TO-DAY

Don't put off doing a good thing until to-morrow. If you do, another opportunity may be lost. Why not sit right down now and send us an order for some copies of the June Number of the Signs of the Times Monthly? Not necessarily a big order; a few perhaps for a starter. You can probably arrange your work so you can spend a couple of hours a week in this way. The profits, though worth while, are not so much a consideration as is the joy, happiness and spiritual uplifting that accompanies missionary work thus done.

The June Number Is Excellent

Any of its 29 articles on various topics are easily worth 10 cents—the price of the paper. You pay but 4 cents per copy for from 25 to 500 copies.

If “The Voices of the Stones” fails to interest, then some one of the following is sure to:

Discontent and Strife Around the World

A Sabbath Change Foretold

Free from the Law

The Story of a Hod-Carrier

Church Federation

Prohibition Progress in the United States

How Much Water to Drink and When

Vegetarian Recipes

The cover in two colors is striking. It will help you sell.

All you have to do is to sign an order, procure a money-order, and send them to your tract society, or to us, and we will do the rest.

Orders are also filled by the Pacific Press at 1109 E. 12th St., Kansas City, Mo.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Mountain View, California

Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones

Familiar Talks with Boys and Girls About Common Things

UNCLE BEN has such a pleasing way of telling about the origin and use of common, every-day articles, that he holds the interest of the reader from the start in his talks about air, water, sunshine, fire, smoke, glass, coal, salt, paper, matches, etc.

He tells about more than one hundred different things in all, and intersperses with many happy thoughts that bring good cheer to young and old.

Two hundred and twenty-one pages, nicely bound. Price, post-paid, $1.00.

Pacific Press Publishing Assn.

Mountain View, California

Portland, Ore. Regina, Sask., Can. Kansas City, Mo.

Four Baptized in Denver

BROTHER CARL SVENSON, who has charge of the Swedish work in Denver, Colo., reports that four have taken their stand for the truth and have been baptized.

Wanted for Missionary Work

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Watchman, Liberty, Life and Health, Life Boat, and Instructor. Send every week to Miss Ada Ritz, Sonoma, Cal.

Chinese Liberality

By J. P. Laird

The following incident will be an encouragement to the kind friends who have been subscribing to the Seventh-day Adventist Mission Press Fund in China. Last Sabbath it was arranged that special collections should be taken up for this purpose in all our stations in China. After a few remarks by the writer calling attention to the map of China which was hung before the small congregation at Changsha, a few texts were quoted in concert, special emphasis being laid upon Paul's injunction: “He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly. . . . Let each man do according as he hath purposed in his heart; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound unto you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work.” 2 Cor. 9: 6-8.

Tears of joy filled our eyes when Brother Huang Hanyong said he would be glad to donate ten dollars provided he could pay it in ten instalments. Finding this was acceptable, his head dropped to hide the gathering tears of gratitude. This brother previously received seven dollars a month, but last month was raised to eight dollars. He does not live on the mission compound, and has a wife and little girl to support. He pays his tithe regularly, and his Sabbath offerings are usually about five cents, with an occasional cent or two from his wife and daughter.

The others asked me to wait until the morrow when a slip was handed to me containing four names with two pledges of 3,000 cash each, and two of 2,000 cash each, to be paid in ten monthly contributions. (One dollar is equal to about 1,330 cash present local currency.) One is unable to say anything definite of these men's income, but one is glad to accept a free lodging from us. His wife refuses to have anything to do with him because he attends worship here. Another contributor has not been with us more than two weeks.

Later, I asked Brother Huang if he thought he could really afford so large a donation. With choking words he replied: “God is able to give me much more than this.” Surely such self-sacrifice and beautiful faith will be abundantly blessed by our common heavenly Father. Moreover, such men will cause the truth to spread rapidly among their fellow countrymen. We await word from two absent brethren, trusting they will show that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Your brother, J. P. LAIRD.

Changhai, Hunan, China.

Wanted

By A. K. Johnson

Man between the ages of 20 and 35, single, to work on small fruit farm. Must be a consecrated Seventh-day Adventist that I can take into my home the same as one of the family. Wages $20.00 per month, board, room, and washing the year around. Church privileges.

A. K. JOHNSON, Tehama Co. Bend, Cal.

Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing.

—An exposition of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. It has 218 pages and six chapters: On the Mountainside, The Beatitudes, The Spirituality of the Law, The True Motive in Service, The Lord’s Prayer, Not Judging but Doing. A new edition just printed on fine enameled paper, new type, and reillustrated with 27 beautiful half-tone engravings specially prepared for the book by eminent New York artists. It will be found full of comfort and blessing by all fortunate enough to obtain and read it. A beautiful gift book. In paper covers, 35 cents. Address this office.

Confiding in Father and Mother

By L. D. Avery-Stuttle

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

Did you ever visit at a home in which the sons and daughters, grown up or otherwise, confided implicitly in their parents? where Miss Mary or Jane, even tho almost out of their teens, never so much as bought a cheap dress for themselves without the approval of mother; and where Frank or William refused to decide anything of importance until they had consulted with father? Of course it goes without saying, that the younger members of the household will follow the example and leadership of the older.

If you have ever visited in such a home as this, I will guarantee that you had a very enjoyable visit. We all remember a few such homes as these, and can point out a few such families — ideal homes — ideal families. But their name is not legion.

On the contrary, about as soon as the average youngster arrives at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he no longer stands in the need of the advice of father or mother, whom he regards as quite behind the times. To such youths it is really astonishing that mother has lived so many years and knows so little; or that father has been such a long, long time in acquiring a little property. He is sure he could do much better.

I have in mind just now a young lad who declared with a boastful swagger, as he was about leaving the beautiful home of his childhood, beautified by the loving hand and the generous purse of an indulgent father, that he didn’t ask more than three short years in which to accumulate as much as his old father had been half a century in getting. Of course the egotism and folly of this silly youth were only equaled by his utter unfitness for any kind of useful labor.

So he soon found to his surprise and chagrin, that the great, wide world was not waiting to boost him upon its shoulders and listen to his advice, and that greenbacks and gold dollars didn’t grow on bushes. Long before the three years were gone, the foolish lad, grown somewhat wiser, let us hope, had returned again to the home he had so despised.

But listen while I ask Miss Edith her opinion on this subject. She declares that she would be glad to confide in mother, but never having been accustomed to doing so, she hardly knows how to begin.

“My mother is a very busy woman, you see, and she has so many things to attend to that I hardly feel like bothering her with my own private affairs. She is secretary of the temperance league, and they have their clubs and their suppers and what not; then she is leader of the Foreign Mission Society; besides the Epworth League and the Dorcas Society claim much of her attention. So you see I feel that I may not trespass on her time, except on matters of real importance to me,—and even then she seems worried and annoyed. Just yesterday I ventured to ask her a question on a matter very near my heart, just as she was going out to attend a Foreign Mission meeting, and she spoke to me so hastily that I almost cried. She asked me why I troubled her; that she feared she would be late to the meeting. ‘Edith,’ she said, ‘when will you learn to be more self-reliant? Do as you like about the matter, of course.’ Sometimes I ask father; but it’s a good deal the same with him; father never visits with us; so brother Jack and I are left to our own devices.”

I am somewhat interested in this case, and so I ask: “Is brother Jack a good, steady boy, Edith?”

“O yes, Jack’s a good boy, but lately he’s taken to staying out nights real late. I hope nothing bad will come of it. I told mother the other day that I did wish she’d talk to him, and she said, yes, she surely intended to that very night, if she had time,—and if not, to speak to father, and he’d talk to Jack. But that night the Dorcas Society met, and she didn’t have time, and father was very busy reading the newspaper all the evening, and I didn’t hardly feel like interrupting him. So after a little, Jack slipped on his overcoat and hurried out of the hall door. I looked at him and shook my head, but he didn’t pay any attention, and that night,” continued Edith, “he didn’t get home until after midnight. Mother looked quite worried the next day; tho whether it was Jack’s conduct that worried her, I don’t know, for she said afterward that the Dorcas Society had failed to raise as much money as they did last year, so maybe it was that which troubled her; I didn’t dare ask. My mother never confides in us, nor do we children confide in her,” and Edith sighs softly, while a suspicion of a tear glistens for a moment in her eye. Then she turns hastily away, remarking as she does so: “Please don’t think mother or father are to be blamed, they are good and kind to us, and I am sure Jack and I love them very much,—only I don’t feel quite satisfied, somehow,—and I don’t believe Jack does, either.”

Now I am sorry to believe that this is only a typical case. There are many and many mothers who seem to be more burdened for the far-away heathen than they are for their own sons and daughters. And it is well that they do have hearts to feel for others, and for the miseries of the wretched on the other side of the globe. No one can have any too much sympathy for the sorrowing, the ignorant, or the suffering.

It is not good by any means to be so wrapped up in our own affairs, our own business, our own loved ones, that we have no time in which to minister to others.

But while this is true, it is certainly not pleasing in the sight of Him who has commanded parents to bring up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” for them to be so engrossed in caring for some one’s else family, as to neglect either the spiritual or the temporal welfare of their own. Nor is it His will for them to fail to make themselves companionable to their sons and daughters.

I tell you, I believe the great trouble is, parents and children never get half acquainted with each other; the one is too busy, the other too timid.

O, to win the perfect confidence of the boys and girls is a beautiful thing. Father, it pays to take the time and the pains to do so. Mother, it pays to take James and Mary by the hand; to look into their eyes; to feel their moral pulse; to pray with them; to enter heart and soul into all their troubles.

Father, mother, as you value your peace of mind hereafter, as you long for the eternal welfare of your loved ones, don’t let the boys and girls get away from you. Cling to that wayward boy of yours, father; show him that you still believe in him, and have confidence in his integrity; then he will see that you truly love him, and will give you his love and confidence in return. Parents, those boys and girls were given you as a precious charge, to train for heaven. Christ is able and willing to give you wisdom enough to do it. Will you ask Him?

“If Any Man Open”

By James Bowker

LAST night I dreamed, as on my bed I lay, That dismal fear took hold upon my mind; Swayed wildly by the moaning wintry wind, The trees were waving in the rain-splashed lane, And yet upon the curtained window-pane There was a brightness as of summer day. Then, hushed as is the land-breeze on the sea, A gentle whisper, Jesus, came from Thee; So I arose and flung the casement wide, To see whence swept the sweet, faint sounds, the light; The Lord walked on the road, and loud I cried As He passed by my door into the night, “Master, where dost Thou go? Where wander still?” And Jesus spake and said, “Against thy will I can not ope, the bar is on thy side.”

— James Bowker.

Parents’ Responsibilities to Their Children

By Ellen G. White

Too OFTEN parents give to the world the time and attention that belong to their children. If they would realize the responsibilities resting upon them, if they would do all in their power for their children, God would work with them. The Lord will not do the work that He has given parents to do; but He will be their helper, cooperating with every sincere, unselfish effort they make.— Mrs. E. G. White.

Make Home a Happy Place

WE spend much of our time at home, or at least we should do so. Let it be our aim, then, to make it as delightful a place as possible, says a writer in The Lutheran. It need not be a grand place, nor be furnished with extravagance; it is the spirit that pervades, and the harmony and happiness found there, and the common interests, that make home a happy place.

How memory clings to home scenes and home experience! Let us prepare pleasure and pastimes for the little ones. Let us give them happy hours around the parental hearth. They will never forget these things. Let us make our homes so dear to all concerned that our boys and girls will not be in haste to get away into the world.

Life and Health

A PRACTICAL health journal, published with a view of meeting hygienic needs in every home; teaching how to care for the health and how to preserve life; prescribing simple home treatments to assist nature in throwing off diseases rather than adding more poison by using drugs or unnatural stimulants as remedies; teaching how to avoid disease as far as possible, how to manage in the home when sickness does come, and how to combat the disease by simple remedies which nature provides.

Send for sample copy and special rates to agents. Price 10 cents per copy or $1.00 per year.

Address, LIFE & HEALTH, Takoma Park, D. C.

LIBERTY

THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY BUREAU

An illustrated, 48-page, quarterly magazine, published as an exponent and advocate of true religious liberty; defending Christianity and the rights of conscience; upholding the Bible as the infallible word of God; recognizing the church and state as ordained of Heaven for specific and distinct purposes, but vigorously protesting against the alliance of the church with the state in the attempt to advance religion and to promote the state. Price 25 cents per year. Liberal terms to agents.

Address, LIBERTY, Takoma Park, D. C.

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Our Little Friend

An Illustrated Paper for the Smaller Men and Women, for the Children and Little Ones

Instructive and entertaining, clean, wholesome sensible. It is a character builder, a helper to father and mother. Our Little Friend would plant seed in the joyous life of the children in the Present, that it may bear blessed fruitage in the Harvest of the Future. Respect your child's individuality. Take the paper for him or her. Only 50 cents a year.

Address, OUR LITTLE FRIEND, Mountain View, Cal.

Partner Wanted

In good blacksmith business. Must be a first-class smith and horseshoer. Adventist preferred. Address C. J. Swanson, Box 76, Riverton, Wyo.

INDIVIDUAL COMMUNION SERVICE.

Should be used by every church. Seventh-day Adventist Church, Lincoln, Neb., writes, “Service used April 6th with greatest satisfaction. We are delighted with it.”

Outfit sent for trial before purchasing. Not expensive. Address Thomas Communion Service Co., Box M., Lima, Ohio.

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Taft Honors Veterans at Petersburg

President Taft went to Petersburg, Va., May 19, to be present at the unveiling of a monument erected on the Petersburg battle-field, in memory of General Hartranft and of the Pennsylvania volunteers who fell there. Veterans in blue and veterans in gray were present. In the course of his address the President said:

“In the time which has passed, the bitterness of the internecine struggle has passed away, and we now treasure as a common heritage of the country the bravery and the valor of both sides in that controversy. The Army of the Potomac, under Grant and Meade, was seconded and supported by a generous government. It was hardly so with the Confederate forces. Scantily clothed, rarely on more than half rations, and for considerable periods reduced to an allowance of bacon and meal hardly sufficient to sustain life, the long winter through, their shivering infantry manned the ever-extending siege works, and made head against the vigorous assaults of the Union army until their depleted ranks were no longer equal to the defense of their attenuated lines, and they gave up a contest which by any other soldiers but the tried and seasoned veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia would long before have been abandoned. Pennsylvania’s pride must be in the victory achieved by her men against so brave, resolute, and resourceful an enemy. That we can come here to-day and in the presence of thousands and tens of thousands of the survivors of the gallant Army of Northern Virginia and of their descendants establish such an enduring monument by their hospitable welcome and acclaim, is conclusive proof of the uniting of the sections and a universal confession that all that was done was well done, that the battle had to be fought, that the sections had to be tried, but that in the end the result has inured to the common benefit of all.”

South African Union Proposed

The South African states are about to be consolidated into a union if affairs continue to proceed as they have since last February. The constitution has already passed the second revision, and has yet to pass the scrutiny of two official bodies before being taken by a commission to the English Parliament in London for final ratification.

The Sabbath and the Law of God

There are two great truths that forever ought to decide all Christians in respect to the Sabbath question and the law of God: (1) God is unchangeable, and therefore His moral law, or His law of moral conduct, is the same in all ages; and (2) the teaching and example of our blessed Lord relative to that law. Decided in the light of these truths, what day is the Sabbath?

It Ought Not So to Be.

A noted political reformer truly remarked a few years ago that the world expects of the church more than she demands of herself. But it ought not so to be. God would have His church doing what would astonish the world and all the hosts of evil if she would but trust Him, live His life, and receive her orders from Heaven. The trouble is that the church professes to be of heavenly origin, and yet is using worldly means and methods to accomplish a work for which she ought to have the power of God. Of course, she makes a failure. Her power is in the Spirit and word of God, not in the civil power.

It Is One Book.—

“It is a well-known fact that the severest test of a railroad engineer relates to the question of his ability not to take his engine apart, but to assemble its parts together if once they are disjointed. The good colored brother was perhaps cognizant of this fact who remarked of the critical attempts of his own pastor: ‘He can take the Bible apart as good as any man I ever seed, but he can’t put it together again.’ It is a pity that anybody should want to take such a grand old Book apart. But the Bible can never really be dismembered and destroyed.”—New York Observer. And why?—The word of God is bound together by the One life.

Armenian Massacres.

It is conservatively reckoned now that 25,000 Armenians have been murdered in the region about Alexandretta Bay in Asia Minor, and as many more are said to be homeless and in grave danger of starvation. In the Province of Adana, the newspapers tell of what closely approaches a complete extermination of male Armenians, while many small villages were actually wiped out.

Repudiating the Unwritten Law.

It is refreshing to know that justice takes its course sometimes against a so-called unwritten law. It is often customary to justify murder in cases where the husband takes vengeance upon the man who he thinks is guilty of despoiling his home. In the Captain Hains case lately the twelve men to whom this appeal on behalf of the unwritten law was made by intimation if not by explicit statement in the course of the trial have disregarded this doctrine of anarchy. The jury gave the prisoner the benefit of the doubt, and brought in their verdict of homicide. He was thus convicted of manslaughter. By this verdict the jury repudiated the doctrine of the “Unwritten Law,” and have therefore rendered to society a larger service than is involved in the mere punishment of a criminal. Society has fundamental rights which the criminal is bound to respect.

Coal and Human Life.

In an article in the June Outlook, entitled, “The Cost of Coal in Human Life,” occur the following words:

“From first to last our coal production has cost us more in loss of life than the Civil War, and, unlike the heroic men who dyed the fields of battle with their blood, these hardy soldiers of industry die in the forefront of a nation’s peaceful battle, victims of a ghastly tragedy, and their only reward is a place in some potter’s field, or its equivalent.”

More Coal Trusts.—

The Interstate Commerce Commission’s report recently tells us that more than a score of coal and railway companies were merged into the innocuously named Sunday Creek Company, incorporated under the laws of New Jersey. And now a Baltimore despatch to the New York Commercial reports another merger, that of the Consolidation Coal Company. The companies included in this last-named merger have a combined capital of $37,650,000, and own bituminous coal-lands in four states.

Activity of the Nations

The Sultan of Turkey, without doubt, has been the cause of much of the bloodshed and murder that have characterized some sections of that country in recent years. The number of those murdered in cold blood during the régime of the deposed Sultan numbers up into thousands, the exact number no one knows. It has now been learned that if the revolt against the new mode of government, which revolt he directly instigated, proved ineffectual, he had decided upon a slaughter of foreigners in Constantinople, expecting that foreign intervention would then be necessary, and that the blame of the insurrection could be put upon the Constitutionalists, making their further rule impossible. When this plot of the deposed Sultan was revealed to the leaders of the besieging army, it descended upon Constantinople the day before its schedule time. By how narrow a margin was the Constitutional movement successful! Now that the late Sultan is removed, it would seem that the greatest difficulty in the way of progress for Turkey is removed. Future events will demonstrate how fully this is true. For the sake of the Gospel missionary, we trust that Turkey will now have something like a reign of peace.

The new Sultan of Turkey is inspiring considerable hope for the future welfare of Turkey. He seems to abound in moderation and manifests good judgment. A possibility of something like religious liberty dawning in that country now seems probable. After being girt with the imperial sword by the highest dignitary of the church and nation next to the Sultan,—the identical sword once wielded by Othman,—the new Sultan appeared before the people. The people shouted loyally and the soldiers fired a grand military salute. But significant of a new order of things, something never heard of before, outside of the Mohammedan priests surrounding the Sultan, as he stood in the square before the Mosque, were official representatives of the principal religions, other than Mohammedan, of the empire—the Greek patriarch, the chief Jewish Rabbi, and delegates from the Armenian, Bulgarian, and other churches. And then, above all the noise made by the soldiers and the people, rose a chorus sung by the schoolboys, the “Hymn of Liberty.”

The strike in France called for the government postal and telegraph employees proved to be practically a failure. There was so little response that the strike was called off two days after being called. But it is evident that considerable bad feeling exists notwithstanding. In the provinces as well as in Paris there have been numerous cases of the cutting of telegraph wires and the destruction of letters in the boxes by pouring in destructive fluids. The battle-ship “Danton,” which was to be launched at Brest on May 22, was stuck on the ways, and there she remains, in great danger of a collapse of the supporting structure. There is grave suspicion that this is a case of intentional injury perpetrated by some of the workmen, many of whom are anarchists and have openly boasted that the battle-ship would never be launched.

Various nations of the world have planned or in process of construction about seventy “Dreadnought” type of battle-ships. These will cost about ten million dollars each, and the whole number will cost in the aggregate the enormous sum of seven hundred million dollars. It would seem that with each year the limit of the war spirit had been reached, but not so, for as soon as one type has come to be recognized as the possible limit we find something else put forward that totally eclipses all previous efforts. Thus are the nations arming for the last great battle. The enormous preparations are really for that last awful struggle. No one of the naval Powers is planning it consciously that way, but so it will turn out.