p. 16 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 14. (4/8/1913)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA, APRIL 3, 1913

Our authority is the Bible, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. When the Common ("King James" or "Authorized") Version or the American Standard Revised Version is used, the version will not generally be designated in reference. Any Bible quotation in this paper, therefore, differing from the Common Version, unless otherwise indicated, will be almost invariably from the American Standard edition of the Revised Bible, copyright 1910, by Thomas Nelson & Sons.

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Contained in This Issue

By Editor

Question Corner 4040 — Shall We Know Each Other? 4041 — The Creation of Man and the Plan of God; 4042 — Chinese Chronology; 4043 — Sun Standing Still - - - - - - 2 Our Bible Band - - - - - - - 2 General Walk in the Light - - - - - - - 3 Present-Day Agitation Regarding the Sabbath - - - - - - - 4 A Study of the Sanctuary — Its Yearly Services and Cleansing - - - - - 5 Are the Dead Really Dead? - - - - - 6 Our Bible Reading The True Lord's Day - - - - - - - 7 Editorial Servant and Lord - - - - - - - 8 "A Physical Necessity" - - - - - - 8 Garbled Statements of Facts - - - - - 8 Studies in Ephesians A Glimpse of the Great Mystery - - - - 8 The Outlook Our India Letter - - - - - - - 10 The Storm Demons - - - - - - - 12 Notes - - - - - - - - 12, 16 Home and Fireside Growing Round a Trouble - - - - - 13 How to Make a Home Happy - - - - - 13 Poetry Joy in Heaven — The Forward Look — Life — The Gentle Word - - - - - - 7 Book Notices - - - - - - - 12, 14

Our General Conference Committee has appointed Sabbath, May 3, as a day to be especially given up to our young people. It is known as Missionary Volunteer Day, and all our churches are asked to observe it. A suggestive program for the occasion appears in the Review and Herald of April 17.

Sunday Legislation and Congressional Riders

Our Outlook department next week will contain a very valuable article from our Washington correspondent, on the Sixty-second Congress and Sunday legislation. It will tell the story of how questionable laws are being secured through "riders" to various bills. Congress worked right through Sunday in order to dispose of important legislation before the administration of Mr. Taft closed. Mr. Taft, the outgoing president, worked hard Sunday to close up his work; and Mr. Wilson, the incoming president, worked hard on the same day to prepare for his inauguration and inception into office. Our correspondent tells how, at the same time that this vigorous Sunday work was going on, laws were being rushed through Congress to make it a misdemeanor to work on Sunday. The article should not be missed by any one.

What Does It Mean to You?

What Does It Mean to You?—Our hearts sympathize with the sufferers from the awful storms and tempests and tornadoes and floods which have swept so many states in the great Mississippi Valley. See our Outlook department for fuller mention. Floods in Ohio are not unprecedented, and human greed and carelessness are denuding the land of its forests, and in poor construction of dams and levees, are somewhat responsible. But the tornadoes are unprecedented. When the writer was a boy, a very destructive tornado was a rare thing. They were never looked for save in the heated season, in which electric storms were common. They come in winter now. The sin-laden earth has waxed old like a worn and frazzled garment, as God declared it would (Ps. 102:25, 26; Heb. 1:10-12), and it is nearing the end of its sinful career. Soon the Christ of God will come preparatory to its folding up and changing. Men may sneer and laugh at the Word, but they will not when they meet face to face the out-working of finished sin, these awful spasms of outraged nature. The wise will seek that Refuge to which God invites, the shelter of the mighty Rock, the sheltering, rescuing Hand which snatches from the grave its prey, the Life which conquers death in righteousness, and saves the trusting one to a better world, sinless, stormless, deathless, the great Forever-land, God's country. It is worth while, soul, to trust in the One who is "able to save."

Crime and Corruption in Public Office

The revelations in the investigations of the criminal trust of New York City show that those who have a corner there on vice and crime are reaping as big a harvest as those who corner the necessities of life. The tabulated figures show that this organization which is getting money for the protection of vice and crime has an income of $11,800,000 a year, or more than $30,000 a day. Think of what this means in just one of our leading cities. Men who have been elected to office by the people, have formed a league with the criminal, and have commercialized every vice and crime that appeals to the depraved human being, and are making their living by actually trading in the commodities of sin. And New York is no worse than San Francisco or Chicago or any of the other cities of the world. Criminality has debauched our public servants to an awful extent, and the public are at their mercy. Heroic efforts through the officials and others who refuse to stoop to such wickedness, are being made in many places to stop the thing; but it keeps breaking out worse and worse. We are forcibly reminded of the scripture in Timothy which tells us that "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." Mere man is powerless before the situation in crime that confronts the world. It will take the arm of the Infinite at the second coming of Christ to give the death stroke to the evil giant that has arisen.

The Owens River Aqueduct

The Panama Canal has been called the "wonder of the age," but there is a work being done in connection with the city of Los Angeles that is not a little thing, by any means. The Owens River Aqueduct, now almost completed, brings an actual river of water from the snow line in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada range, over mountain chains, plains, and deserts, for a distance of 240 miles, to the city of Los Angeles. Another thing is that the work is nearly completed on scheduled time, and is within the estimated cost, put at $23,000,000. Such a stupendous undertaking would have been regarded an utter impossibility a few years ago.

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Dry Prescriptions. — The bill was up again at Sacramento to endeavor to compel physicians to write their prescriptions in plain English, instead of Latin; for instance, to say "salt" instead of "chloride of sodium," "pure water" instead of "aqua pura;" but the doctors killed the bill. One is quoted as saying, "If a fellow knows what's in his medicine, it doesn't do him a particle of good." We believe the physicians lose by it. Many intelligent people want to know somewhat of what they swallow and its modus operandi.

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“Free and Equal.”—And now here comes the Christian Herald of itself, and quoting from Ex-president Taft, charging the Declaration of Independence with saying, “All men are created free and equal.” It does not say it. It does say, “All men are created equal,” that is, as regards the common rights of mankind. Equality before God and just law and government is one thing; freedom is another. Anyway quote correctly.

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Gasoline, one of the great elements in mechanical power nowadays, is soaring in price. Mr. Rockefeller is reported as saying ''that he would enjoy a motor boat this summer, but that fuel will be too expensive for him to afford it.'' We are told that ''the supply of crude oil is running low,'' and men are using much more gasoline in automobiles, many of them at the expense of a mortgage on farm and home.

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A Proposed Transcontinental Automobile Road

Some automobile manufacturers are touring the continent with a view to surveying an automobile road to reach from New York to San Francisco. The proposed highway is to be of stone and beautifully smooth. It looks as tho motoring from ocean to ocean would soon be as common as railroad trips of the same character.

California’s Textbook Shortage

By Editor

California will be in trouble about its textbooks. The state decided to print its own, but the fall demand will equal, Superintendent Haitt tells us, one million books, and the office can only turn out 500,000.

Enlarging the Supreme Court

A bill was before the last Congress, and will probably be before the next one, for the enlargement of the Supreme Court to eleven members rather than nine. The first Supreme Court numbered six.

California Legislature to Adjourn

The California Legislature has voted to adjourn on April 26.