p. 21 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 1, No. 3. (6/25/1874)

Is Sin Immortalized?

By I. D. Van Horn

This is a question of vast importance when we take into consideration the different results, if answered in the affirmative, or in the negative. Those who hold the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul are compelled to answer it in the affirmative. It is written, “God is love;” but he has no love for sin. It follows that, if sin is immortalized, then that must always exist which God hates. Many look upon God as the author of sin. If so, then God is a sinner; for he could not be the author of anything contrary to the attributes of his being.

Again, if sin is immortalized, then Satan and the host of fallen angels, and the vast multitude of wicked men are immortal. If these are to exist to all eternity, then God must provide a place for them in his universe; for neither Satan nor any of his followers are able to create a world. The Father and the Son alone have this power. Therefore, if we take the affirmative of this question, we must conclude that Satan has instituted a rebellion that God cannot quell, and brought a stain on the universe that God cannot wipe out. Such a monstrous idea, though held by thousands, cannot come from any other source than the regions of darkness.

The universe of God was once clean, and all the intelligences thereof were in perfect harmony. Will it ever be so again? All who attribute immortality to Satan and his followers, must answer, No. But this answer is contrary to revelation. “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever.” Rev. 5: 13.

But it will be said, that Satan and his hosts of wicked angels and wicked men will be banished to some place where they will endure the torments of a guilty conscience to all eternity. This would remove the wicked from the earth to some other place to receive their punishment, which would be contrary to the word of God. The Bible declares the fact that the wicked, whether they be men or angels, will receive their punishment on this earth. “The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth; much more the wicked and the sinner.” Prov. 11: 31. “But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word, are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” 2 Pet. 3:7. “And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.” Rev. 20: 9, 10. This fire is prepared for the devil and his angels. Matt. 25: 41. Thus it will be seen that the earth is the place appointed by the Lord for his enemies to receive their doom.

Some think the expression “everlasting fire” in the last mentioned text, conveys the idea of unending torment. Fire and brimstone were rained on Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jude calls this “eternal fire.” Verse 9. The apostle Peter tells us what effect it had on those cities. “And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly.” 2 Pet. 2: 6. Away back in the days of Abraham and Lot, in the destruction of those cities, God gave to future generations an example of what would be their doom should they live ungodly. If eternal existence in sin and torment is their portion, then we ought to see the flames still ascending from those cities, and hear wailing and the gnashing of the teeth of the corrupt inhabitants thereof. But no, they are silent, and with their cities they are reduced to ashes. To be reduced to ashes is to be the final doom of the ungodly, or the example God has set before the world is without force. Says the prophet, “Behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” Mal. 4: 1. In verse three he goes on to say, that the wicked shall be ashes under the saint’s feet. Satan is the “root” and his followers are the branches, and they will all be consumed together.

“These shall go away into everlasting punishment,” Matt. 25: 46, is a text that many tenaciously hold to as signifying eternal torment. But inspired Paul plainly informs us that this “everlasting punishment” is “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.” 2 Thess. 1: 9. It is the second death and, as there is no resurrection from it, the punishment is eternal.

But the earth, in which the wicked will receive their doom, will not burn to all eternity; for, after the cleansing by fire, it will be made over into a new earth. Rev. 20: 9—21: 8. In the great plan of redemption, the earth, as well as man, is to be made free from the curse. This new earth will never be polluted by the trail of the old serpent, or with the feet of wicked men. It is to be fitted up for the everlasting abode of the righteous.

The Bible plainly reveals the fact that the wicked shall go into the lake of fire; but in no place does it say they will ever come out of it. Now, as there is no trace of them to be found in the new earth, excepting their ashes, it is very natural to conclude that they end their existence in the lake of fire. “The wages of sin is death.” Rom. 6: 23.

Thus it will be seen that sin and sinners are not immortal, but will finally close their career in the great conflagration of this world. The universe will be once more clean, and all worlds and every creature then remaining, will be in perfect harmony with the will of Him who maketh all things new.

I. D. VAN HORN.

Are You in Earnest?

It is Christ’s work that you are doing. He has entrusted it to you. You profess to love your Master. Are you really in earnest in your work for him?

It is a great work. Souls are committed to your trust; a work shared by God himself; a work for the promotion of which Christ died; in which angels are interested. Oh thou, who in God’s providence art called to work in the same field with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, with the angels, with Jesus, with the Father himself—art thou in earnest?

The time is short. Your own life is uncertain. The golden opportunity is fleeing. “The night cometh.” Are you in earnest?

Fellow-laborer, face your own conscience, and, remembering that God is looking on your work, ask yourself the question: “Am I in earnest?” “Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

Is Delay Wise?

Dr. Spencer, in a sermon upon delay of conversion, says: “Make up a congregation of a thousand Christians. Divide them into five classes, according to the ages at which they became Christians. Place in the first class all those converted under twenty years of age; and in the fifth class all those converted between fifty and sixty. Of your thousand Christians there were hopefully converted under twenty years of age, five hundred and forty-eight. Between fifty and sixty years of age, three. But you ask, Why stop at sixty years old? Ah! well, then, if you will have a sixth class—converted between sixty and seventy years of age—one. Just ONE out of a thousand Christians converted, over sixty years old! What a lesson on delay! What an awful lesson!”

Seventh-Day Baptists and Seventh-Day Adventists.

By W. M. Jones

It is only thirty years since a Seventh-day Baptist sister, of Verona, New York, conversed with, and gave our Sabbath tracts to Advent ministers and people in Washington, New Hampshire, who received joyfully the blessed Sabbath of the Lord our God. They are now found from Maine to California. They have home missions among the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes, and the French, and soon will have them among the Germans. They have representatives in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The Queen of Denmark reads the Review and Herald of the Sabbath. Eld. J. N. Andrews is about to join the mission in Switzerland, and from thence he will help forward the work in Central Europe. At Battle Creek, Michigan, the Sabbath people have a Health Institute, a Classical School, three power presses and three buildings for printing, and fifty persons at work in the publishing business, and also many cotton chapels and an itinerant ministry moving all over the land. They are said to be orthodox in their belief in salvation only through Christ; they practice believer's baptism, and keep the Seventh-day Sabbath; they reject the use of tobacco and alcoholic drinks, and give largely and constantly of their substance to send forth to every creature their views of the gospel and the doctrine of the Bible Sabbath. They are reputed to be industrious, virtuous and honest, and are certainly very earnest in their work. Verily, they are entitled to the front rank in the work of the restoration of the Sabbath of the Lord.

Seventh-day Baptists appeared in England about 300 years ago, at least as early as 1585. For more than a hundred years they were subject to fines, imprisonment, and martyrdom. Two hundred and ten years ago, Stephen Mumford carried the Sabbath doctrine with him to Newport, Rhode Island. It took seven years to form a church of seven members. Persecution through human law and custom hindered the observance of the Sabbath, but the American Sabbath-keepers were not idlers in the Lord's vineyard; they lived for Christ and their names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Thirty years ago our people may have numbered 6,000. There may have been a gain in this time of 2,500. Education has had a large share of our attention and financial strength. The schools do a good and noble work for the churches and for the country. Sabbath truth has through them been preached in Hayti, Lower Canada, Palestine, and China. Their tracts have gone into North Africa, France, Germany, Russia, and Great Britain. The home work is well known. During the past seven years the tract society has taken a fresh start, and seems really to have made a new lease of its life. The home missionaries, chiefly veterans, are hard at work in regions beyond the churches. Still our progress is vexatiously slow, though sure, so cautiously sure, that others are getting ahead of us. We have homes and lands. Most of us have done well at the beginning of life, that is, we left all the world for Christ, but it is to be feared that many of us are ending our days by leaving Christ for our children; and where are thousands of them? Gone from the Sabbath! It has been said at our conventions, that in forty and fifty years, more children are lost to the denomination than are saved to it. In view of what ought to be done, and might be done, who can blame us for a hurried anxiety to see rapid strides made by our people. Let me propose a few things:

1. Daily prayer. The other night I heard a returned missionary from the Santals, India, say in Exeter Hall, that prayer is agony. Let us know what this means. May we know that God hears the fervent prayers of His people.

2. Let each church send her pastor out into the world for one, or two, or three, months of the year, pay his traveling expenses and continue his salary, and bid him go where the true Sabbath is not named, and there preach it.

3. Two brethren have joined to support a missionary in the field. There are farmers and others who could do the same. Suppose that twenty-four brethren unite in pairs to support twelve missionaries in the open field, and choose their own men. Where there is a will there is a way, which way is so simple in practice, that a fool need not err therein.

4. If the Recorder is to be kept at its present size, ought there not to be published a small weekly sheet containing the trenchant editorials of the former, and other matter relating to the progress of the work? We need such a paper by the ten thousand copies to be sent broadcast all over the land. Thousands would read it who would not look at a tract; and besides there is now needed a large number for gratuitous distribution.

5. Let every member of the denomination mail a tract every week to somebody in some part of the country, and give one in person to some friend or stranger. If 8,000 members were to send weekly 8,000 Sabbath tracts into distant parts, and accompany the deed with the prayer of faith, what might we not expect within a twelve month.

6. God has given our youth great advantages. Knowledge and culture are theirs. May they learn to take up the cross and bear it after Jesus. It is to be hoped that those who are studying for the ministry will look forward to the work of gathering churches, rather than to expect to find a comfortable pasture at the end of their theological course.

7. I have referred to the Advent brethren. Praises be to God that Seventh-day Baptists gave to them the truth of the Sabbath. Let not the latter be jealous of the work of the former; nor let us shake the head and shrug the shoulder at some of the odds and ends which our dignified moderation and respectability do not quite approve.

“What is the chaff to the wheat? Saith the Lord.”

Imperfections and mistakes are common to all, and God blesses faithful laborers who are not yet made perfect. They say: “We are not doing one-twentieth of what we might do.” If this be true of Seventh-day Adventists, what shall be said of our lack and ability? Shall it be said that Seventh-day Baptists are not doing one-fortieth of what they might do? In a letter just received from a dear brother, who is in a position to know, he says, “The Adventists are compassing the world; so might we if we were more devoted.” What is herein pleaded for is a general uprising of our people to go up and possess the land. To monopolize the Sabbath we cannot; but we can begin immediately to double the labor; and then to go on increasing it till the Sabbath has been made known in all the earth. If we do so, “the God of heaven will prosper us.” May “we, his servants, arise and build.”

W. M. JONES.

Mill Yard, May 7th, 1874.

Iowa Camp Meeting.

(Report from the Newton Free Press.)

The Seventh-Day Adventists of Iowa held their Annual Camp Meeting and Conference at the Evans Grove, near this city, commencing last Thursday and closing on Tuesday. The grounds were admirably arranged; the great pavilion located on the east side, with a semi-circle of tents enclosing an area of nearly two acres, upon which ample seats were spread before the platform, while in the adjacent timber the teams were hitched and fed, a well dug on purpose furnishing the requisite amount of water for all. Upon most of the tents a small board was placed with the name of the location from whence the occupants came, which showed that there was a pretty fair representation from all sections of the State. There were nearly forty tents, some localities having two or three, and among them we call to mind places thus designated:

Hook's Point, Victor, Washington, Pilot Grove, Mt. Pleasant, Sigourney, Waukon, Knoxville, Richland, Woodburn, Kellogg, West Union, Alton, Fayette, Elk Horn, La Porte City, Peru, Adel, Marion, Anamosa, Monroe, State Center, Sandyville, Colona, Winterset.

In addition to these there were small numbers from many other places in Iowa, and some from Nebraska, who came without tents and who made themselves at home and comfortable with the brethren better provided.

It is proper to state right here that no orders were given in regard to deportment on the grounds, no guards or sentinels placed on duty, and that from the opening to the close there was not an attempt at disorder or a symptom of rowdyism manifested. The people who came together for the camp meeting attended strictly to business, and the spectators at all the meetings showed that respect which was due to them as strangers and fellow citizens. We do not mention this fact as being unduly creditable to Newton and vicinity, but it is well known, the country through, that it is not very unusual for camp meetings held by any denomination, to be interrupted by rowdies, and that a kind of police has to be established to maintain order. In fact in years past—we trust not to be repeated—the local officials have had to be called upon to make arrests of this class of offenders.

The rains along through the week made the roads quite muddy, and the grounds were rather disagreeable, but when it was rainy the spectators were few, and the regular attendants could crowd into the pavilion, so the meetings three times a day, with committee meetings, business meetings, &c., went regularly on the same as if the weather had been all the time pleasant.

There were present many ministers of the organization, with Elder R. M. Kilgore as apparent leader of Iowa Elders, and of those from abroad were Elder Geo. I. Butler, President of the General Conference, and Elder S. N. Haskell President of one of the New England Conferences, both the latter being extraordinary preachers, and secured by all the State Annual Camp Meetings and Conferences, when their services can be obtained.

The Tract Missionary Society was held Monday morning and $5,355 was pledged, and nearly all paid down at once.

The Annual Conference was held during the Camp Meeting, and the work assigned for the State the coming year, including Nebraska, which has not yet a membership sufficiently strong to justify the formation of a separate conference.

The conference is held annually with the Camp Meeting, and a committee for that purpose fixes the time and place for the next one, but is not determined till the following spring.

The attendance at these Camp Meetings is voluntary, and we are informed that this meeting had about the average attendance of members.

In nearly all the States the membership is sufficient to make up a conference, the largest being in Michigan, with the publishing headquarters at Battle Creek, where all the books and tracts for the society are issued. There are few so extensive publishing houses in the country, about $100,000 being there invested in the publishing business. At Battle Creek they have a college just fairly started, with an endowment of nearly $60,000, and a Health Institute where chronic diseases are successfully treated without medicines.

This is the first great meeting of the Seventh-Day Adventists here, and it may be the last. They came unheralded, attended strictly to the purpose which brought them together, and went quietly away. Those who attended the meetings regularly obtained a pretty full knowledge of their Articles of Faith, but those who attended only a single service or not at all, can know but little of them. Under these circumstances we feel justified in giving a brief synopsis of portions of their Declaration of Principles:

“There is one God, a personal spiritual being, Creator of all things, omnipotent, unchangeable, everywhere present by His representative, the Holy Spirit.

There is one Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Eternal Father, who took on him the nature of man for the redemption of our fallen race; died for us, was raised from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and dwells with God forever.

The Holy Scriptures are a revelation of God's will to man, and are the only infallible rule of faith and practice.

Baptism by immersion is an ordinance of the Christian Church, to follow faith and repentance.

The prophecies are now all fulfilled except the second coming of Christ, for which we must be always ready. The fourth commandment of God's law requires us to devote the seventh day of each week, commonly called Saturday, to abstinence from labor, and the performance of sacred and religious duties.”

In appearance these people are neat without ostentation—plain without a cultivated system of apparel. They teach that the use of tobacco in any form is wrong, yet there are no conditions on the subject in admission to membership. But this teaching has its effect. Elder Kilgore told us on Sunday, that probably we could not find a member of the organization on the camp ground who used tobacco. They teach that the use of tea and coffee is unhealthy and unnecessary, and it is a very rare case to find a member who uses either. They teach that the use of meat as a regular article of diet, and especially pork, should be abandoned, and but few of them use meat. Bread, vegetables, and fruits, they claim are sufficiently wholesome, and that diet should be restricted to what is necessary to keep body and mind in full health and vigor, and not to be under the control of a vitiated appetite.

The meeting has been in all respects a success, and while the people of the town and vicinity have every reason to be pleased, we trust that the visitors from abroad will have none but pleasant recollections of the Camp Meeting at Newton.

Condition of Austria.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

The following interesting article from William M. F. Round in the Independent, gives a good idea of the condition of society in the oldest part of Europe:

“Until a stranger has been long enough in Austria to fully understand the people and their methods of life, together with the relations of government to the same, he will be at a loss to reconcile the seeming discrepancy between the high prices of all domestic products and the low prices of every description of manual labor. If he remains in Vienna or confines his investigation only to the large cities, he will fall into the very natural error of supposing that the empire must be so overcrowded with population as to keep the supply ever within the demand. But let the student make a trip up the Danube and through the heart of Upper Austria, and he will find broad fields, magnificent forests, and mountain sides that afford pastures of the greatest richness. He may walk for hours without seeing a single human habitation, and in a day’s pedestrian journey will stumble across but two or three villages, each one lying within or under the shadow of some ancient castle-wall or monastery. At night he may inquire, as he rests in some modest Austrian country inn, who owns the fields and forests that he sees from the window; and he will be told that the house where he rests, the landscape that his eye encompasses, the country through which he has walked and through which he will walk on the morrow, all belong to the demesne of some Grossherzog, who has held them in hereditary right since the feudal ages, when his peasants were content to be vassals, in consideration of the protection he afforded them.

In a knowledge of this fact is the first step toward an understanding of the relations between Austrian labor and Austrian capital. The nobles claim privileges that have long ceased to be rights, and the Austrian peasant has neither the sense to comprehend nor the courage to resist the power that forces himself and his family into a position of degradation and slavery, while it robs him of the legitimate fruits of his toil. There is a world-wide average value of labor, based upon the universal law of supply and demand; and a country may be reckoned as prosperous or unprosperous in proportion as the prices of labor reach above or fall below this standard. In Austria they fall far below it; as far below it as they rise above it in America. Of course, the standard of labor value exists unchanged; and every Austrian laborer earns it, but he does not get it. Only a small part of it is allowed to him, and the rest goes to support a government made up of an effete aristocracy and a still more effete church. The difference between the true value of labor and the price paid to the laborer here may be regarded as a direct and unpardonable robbery, for which the Austrian dynasty is to answer in blood, by and by. The sops which it has chosen to throw to a people who are already beginning to grumble, in the way of indifferent educational privileges, and the summer’s fete just expiring as a failure, are likely to help the matter about as much as a sugar-plum would stay the hunger of a starving man.

“The people are taxed and taxed again. They are taxed for the land they live on, for the houses they live in, and for all they eat and drink and wear. They are taxed for their pleasures, all their luxuries, as they should be; but they are also taxed, and most heavily, for the necessities of life, as they should not be. If they ride on the railways, five per cent. of the price of their tickets goes to the government. There is nothing they touch in their struggle for life, but the government contrives to make something out of the contract. Then, when the government has taken all it dares to take, the church steps in with its system of robbery, under the pretense of saving souls. When the church is satisfied, there is little left for the peasant; and the consequence is, he goes on toiling harder than a galley slave, and kept too weak in body and soul by his hard living of black bread and sour wine, and by the spiritual slops that are reluctantly fed to him by the educational powers to think of resistance.

“There may be peasants lower down in the social scale than those of Austria. But I have not seen them. They are little better than brutes in all that goes to make life attractive. They toil only that they may fill themselves with the coarsest food, and expect no higher pleasure from their feeding than the sensation of being full. They marry because the church directs that they shall not cohabit without marriage. Their moral sensibilities are of the lowest, and the powers of their souls have been reduced as nearly as possible to a mere matter of brute instinct. They are to be pitied, not blamed, for their condition. So much is taken from each laborer’s

earnings to support the government and the church that all—men, women and children—must work to supply the commonest, coarsest necessities of existence.

I have seen, often enough, women engaged in the most menial occupation of agriculture, such as the spreading of manure and the herding of cattle, with their little ones swathed in a stout cloth and bound to their shoulders or their breasts. I have seen four women yoked like mules to a plow, and a man complacently holding the same. In the streets of Vienna it is not an uncommon thing to see a woman and a dog harnessed side by side to a cart. The hod-bearers are women, the street-sweepers are women, the hewers of wood and drawers of water are women.

“There is but one gate out of this bondage, and over that is written prostitution. Who dares blame the thousands of young women in the humbler stations of Austrian life for having chosen this gate to an easier existence, when a priest stands by and declares that he can, by virtue of his holy office, insure immunity from punishment in the world to come? I say this boldly, for, whatever the church of Rome may teach on this subject, I know that the priests of Austria teach and the people of Austria understand just what I have said. So great is the power of the priests and so deep the superstition of the people that the merest tricks are imposed as real miracles. On an Easter morning during the celebration of the mass in one of the little towns of Upper Austria, the dim flame of the sanctuary lamp suddenly burst into a bright light, just as the Host is elevated, and apparently without human intervention. The greatest excitement prevails. People go down on their faces, and cry: ‘A miracle! A miracle!’ The priests take advantage of the occasion to extort an unusual offering, and not one among the simple-minded congregation has an idea that a trick known to every pyrotechnist has been practiced.”

“But a revolution is already dawning, and the very means which the Austrian government is taking to protect itself from external enemies serve to warm a dangerous serpent in the bosom of the empire.”

“Even now there is a liberal party growing up in the Austrian Empire which well understands these things, and will know how to apply a radical cure where the occasion serves.”

“But there is to be a reform by and by; and the labor reformation and the religious reformation will go hand in hand, beginning on the day when, in favor of Ultramontanism, Austria shall give countenance to France, and Protestant Prussia and Russia resent the interference.”

In Austria, then, as in all other nations, the elements already threaten a storm. Indeed, the whole world seems to be ripe for some great revolution and all are looking for it with fear and dread. The Lord foretold this as a sign of the end. See Luke 21 : 25–27; Rev. 11 : 18. The winds are now only being held a little while till God’s message may be given to the world. Rev. 7 : 1–4.

D. M. C.

The Remedy for Novel Reading

It is said there is but one remedy for the evils of literary intemperance, or novel reading, and that is total abstinence.

California Grain and Fruit Prospects

The grain and fruit prospects are unusually good in all parts of California.

Local Option.

The excitement created by the act of the Legislature, giving each township the privilege of calling a special election to decide whether any further license shall be granted to sell intoxicating liquors, is increasing every day. The oldest temperance men say they never knew anything like it. The public have been so long afflicted by the many evils arising from intemperance that now when the opportunity is offered to crush out the great enemy, they seize upon it with terrible earnestness. Every lover of good order must be interested in the contest. The motives which actuate men in this struggle are higher than mere party feelings of political strife. In the battle against license, we labor to check a great and crying evil. All party names and feelings are lost in the common cause of humanity and morality.

The working of the Local Option Law is explained by the S. F. Bulletin as follows:

“It will become unlawful, within the limits of Woodland Township, to ‘sell or give, or offer to sell or give, any spirituous, vinous, malt, or other intoxicating liquors, in quantities less than five gallons.’ Any infraction of the law subjects the parties to it to a penalty not exceeding $25 for the first offense, and not less than $50, nor more than $100 for each subsequent one. As the act provides that no election shall take place under its provisions oftener than once in two years, if the Yolo Supervisors determine that the majority of votes is for ‘No License’ the consequence will be that for two years at least no person can engage in the liquor business in Woodland, and then not until after another election shall have been held. No doubt a case will be taken to the Supreme Court to test the constitutionality of this law—but in other States similar laws have been sustained by all the courts.”

The following items, clipped from the Oakland Daily News, will give some idea of the zeal of the workers in this contest:

“WHAT THE WOMEN DID.”

The excitement ran high from the opening of the polls until sundown. The presence of women on the street, offering their ‘No License’ tickets to every passer-by, was a novelty that struck all as being an exceedingly remarkable feature. ‘Have you voted, sir?’ was the usual salutation of the fair ones, who at the same time extended their tickets to the accosted. All along Broadway, at the Point, Temescal, and in other parts of the city, were large numbers of matrons and misses to be seen engaged in the arduous service they had accepted in the noble cause. The ladies did not limit their work to a mere distribution of tickets, many of them feeling it their duty to urge indifferent voters and others who declared themselves for license, to vote an ‘Against License’ ticket.

“LARGE AND ENTHUSIASTIC GATHERINGS OF THE PEOPLE AT THE ADVENT ELDERS’ TENTS ON BROADWAY AND IN EAST OAKLAND.”

At the corner of Fourteenth street last night was one of the largest of the campaign. Every seat was filled and every foot of standing room occupied, and hundreds remained outside where they could hear the speakers if not see them. Fully one-half of the audience were ladies. A band was stationed outside, and music was played at the close of each speech. A large transparency was displayed in front of the entrance to the tent, upon one side of which was the motto, ‘Home Influence versus Whisky,’ and upon the other, ‘Oakland Ladies and Flowers Won the Battle May 30th.’ Another transparency, barrel-shaped, bore the significant legend, ‘The Death Knell Has tolled.’ Over the speakers’ stand was the inscription, ‘Against License. Our Oakland Homes.’

“EAST OAKLAND.”

A rousing meeting was held in the Elders’ tent, nearly opposite the Postoffice. Though Elder Cornell had previously announced his subject for the evening, he only used a few minutes and managed his subject so as to direct his remarks to the temperance cause, assuring his audience of his hearty co-operation in the work.” M. E. C.

Continue reading: Delaying Obedience