As THE season for colds, coughs, and sore throats is drawing on, it is well to give some attention to the predisposing causes of these troubles which give so much anxiety at this time of the year; and especially will parents do well to look to the manner of dress and care of the children.
Perhaps the most common cause of this form of disease will be found in the careless exposure of the feet and limbs to the cold and wet. When the lower portion of the limbs is protected by only one, or at best two, thicknesses of thin material, and the feet tightly laced in thin shoes, the blood becomes chilled in its attempt to circulate through these organs, and partial stagnation of the flow takes place. As the result, two very important conditions follow:—
First, the blood, having become heavily charged with the poisons that have been poured into it during its sluggish flow through the chilled extremities, passes in such close proximity to the delicate organs lying in the lower portion of the abdomen that its poisonous condition is reflected, sympathetically, upon these organs, and frequently an almost irreparable injury is done, which manifests itself at the critical period when the child is entering the stage of manhood or womanhood, and frequently through all the after life.
The second unfavorable condition resulting from the exposure of the feet and limbs, is that in which the throat, lungs, and bronchial tubes are affected. The heart, not being able to force the blood through the contracted blood vessels of the extremities as it should, drives it in such large quantities to the lungs, bronchia, and other internal organs, that immediately a state of inflammation, frequently followed by congestion, ensues, and, unless the cause is removed or measures taken to relieve these organs from their engorged condition, serious results are equally liable to follow.
Never permit the feet to remain cold. Habitual coldness of the feet is sure to affect some of the more vital organs. Frequent bathing of the feet in hot water, or alternating hot and cold, properly clothing the limbs and feet, with careful attention paid to the taking of proper exercise, rest, and care of the general health, will usually relieve any trouble in this direction.
When a cold has settled on the lungs, or the children are coughing and croupy, hot fomentations to the throat and lungs, taken either in connection with, or immediately following, a good warm footbath, is a most excellent remedy. Get the blood to the extremities and relieve the chest and vital organs of their extra load as soon as possible. When the throat is affected, hot fomentations to that organ, in connection with the hot footbath, are proper, and frequently the holding of small pieces of ice as far back in the mouth as possible, in connection with the other treatment mentioned, will give immediate relief. A strong gargle made of salt and vinegar may be used when there is much phlegm collecting in the throat. An excellent gargle is also made by dissolving in clear water as much chlorate of potash as the water will take up. This may be used freely, only that care should be exercised to not swallow more than can be avoided, as the effect upon the stomach is not the best.
Do not invite throat troubles by bundling up the neck at the very beginning of winter. Accustom that organ to the same exposure as the face, and much serious difficulty will be avoided. In cases, however, where persons have suffered severe troubles with the throat and bronchial organs, more care will be required, but in the majority of cases we invite troubles of this nature by bundling up the throat upon every slight exposure.
Bedford, Mich.
"WINE IS A MOCKER."
WHAT is a mocker?—One that imitates in contempt or derision. To pretend to soothe an aching heart, when in fact embittering its pain—that is mocking. To set a table, laden with food and drink, outside the cell of a man who is starving and famishing, but just beyond his reach—that is mocking. To bid a drunken man be strong—that's mockery. To ask his broken-hearted wife to be cheery—that's mockery. But listen: "And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand, and they bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon Him, and took the reed, and smote Him on the head." Matt. 27: 29, 30, and also verses 40, 42, 43. They were mockers.
Does wine do like that?—Let us see.
How does it mock?—Just the way a monkey, a man, or a devil does; by imitating, in derision, in the moral world, the physical chemistry of useful and legitimate alcohol. The chemist will tell you that alcohol is a colorless liquid, having very high refractive power, great affinity for water, great solvent power, and great antiseptic power. It has other properties; but these four, its refractive, absorbent, solvent, and antiseptic qualities, are those which distinctly characterize it.
Wine is a pauper and a vagrant in the world of art and science, but in the realm of morals, a sneering, mocking pretender to a throne. Alcohol exhibits great refractive power, that is, the power to make rays of light point wrong. Let me explain that opticians have discovered that when a beam of light travels from a rare medium, such as the pure ether of the upper sky, into a denser medium, such as the atmosphere, it is bent downward. For instance, if we go out to-night into the open air and look up at a star, we would say, "That star is right there." And we would suppose that if we had a rifle of sufficient range, a perfectly true eye, and perfectly steady hands, we could send a bullet into its very center. But the astronomer knows he would miss the whole thing by millions of miles, though it was as large as the sun. So when he points his telescope at it, he says, "That is the apparent place of the star." Why apparent?—Because the denser, lower air has broken the rays of light, so that they mislead the eye and project the star upon the sky in a false position. The true position is obtained by calculating the amount of refraction.
Wine mimics this quality in the moral sky, and sets it all awry from zenith to horizon. Alcoholize a man and every ray of truth that shines into his soul will be bent toward falsehood, and the sun of rightness will appear to be where it is not. The wrong will often appear the right, and vice versa; the emotional beauty will often change place with mere lust; the false will seem the true, the brutish will seem the manly, the ribald will seem the humorous.
Let me illustrate: Take a man of pure mind, with a keen sense of humor, but no taste for impurity. Can you make him relish a dirty story?—Certainly. Alcoholize him. Isn't that true? Take a young man of clean life, whose ideas of women have been formed by association with his mother and sisters. Can you make him harbor an insulting thought of a young girl passing him unprotected on the streets at night?—Oh, yes! Alcoholize him, and he will think it funny if his drunken companion leers into her face an insult. Sober, he would consider him a cur to guard all women from. Isn't that true? Let a young man marry a woman whom he loves perfectly, and her love will shine into his life straight from her heart to his, and guide his duty sweetly on right lines. Can the star of his love and duty be displaced without any change in her?—Oh, yes! Alcoholize him and the love ray will be bent down toward his baser being, and he will come to think it shines from a baleful and darkling asteroid of selfishness and peevishness; and in his duty he will grow devious, if not false. Isn't that true?
I sat one Sunday night beside the bed of a drunkard who was a scholar and, as the world estimates, a gentleman. He declined to consider Jesus Christ's old-fashioned remedy, but put forth his hand and said, "There's my hand and my promise never to drink again."
"But," I said, "you will break your word."
He flashed, "Do you say I am not a man of my word?"
I answered: "Yes, you are a persistent promise breaker. Your life is one long lie. You promised your wife this morning never to drink again, and steered straight to a saloon, and drank the Sunday through, and now you insult her by appearing to be true, and insult me by expecting me to believe you when I know you would lie now to shield the dramseller who forfeited his license by selling you drink to-day."
"Do you say I do not love my wife?" he said.
I replied: "No, but I say your lust for drink is greater than your love for anything. You think your wife suspicious and exacting when she is only loving and honest. You have spent her money for drink; that is larceny so mean the law has never thought of defining it. You have been seeing things wrongly. You are a victim of the refractive power of alcohol. Go back twenty years and look at your wife, your word, yourself; then look at them now. Get the parallax, and thank me for being honest with you."
The next morning he came to tell me he had found the Light of the World. Wine has great refractive power in the moral world. It is a mocker.—Selected.
WHAT SHALL I DO?
By Rev. J. H. Myers
BY REV. J. H. MYERS.
"WHAT shall we do?" the children say.
"Where shall I go? What shall I play?
I'm tired of the doll; I'm tired of the cat;
I've lost my ball; I've broken my bat;
Mamma, what shall I do?"
"What shall I do?" the mother said;
"I've an aching heart and an aching head;
The children's noise disturbs me so.
For a moment's rest where can I go?
Oh, dear! what shall I do?"
A broken bat, a deserted doll,
Two empty chairs, and that is all,
A quiet house—'tis painfully still—
A monument white on yonder hill,
No cry, "What shall I do?"
A mother, moaning in grief and pain,
"Oh, that my lambs would come back again!
I listen in vain for the hurrying feet;
Oh, that I might hear their music sweet!
Alas! what shall I do?"
—Selected.
ASIATIC TURKEY.
THE recent outrages perpetrated upon the nominally Christian people of Armenia, by the Moslem minions of the Turkish Government, with the connivance and in some instances by the orders of both civil and military officials, renders mission work in that country a matter of peculiar interest. The principal Protestant work done in that country is through the instrumentality of the American Board of Foreign Missions. From the “Annual Survey” of the work, published in the Missionary Herald of November, we cull the following extracts:—
“In no part of the fields occupied by the board are the contrasted lights and shades of missionary labor more marked than in the Turkish Empire. . . . In all these fields the mission staff is diminished in numbers and weakened in strength to an unusual degree, and the scantiness of the resources at the command of the board has added a peculiar embarrassment. The exactions of the government, the presence of famine in parts of these fields, and outbreaks of lawlessness at many a point, have still further added to the trials and anxieties of the year. As if these were not enough, the Turkish Government seems to be controlled by the steadfast purpose to restrict the evangelical movement, and fetter the freedom of foreign missionaries and native laborers, and to make difficult, if not impossible, the regular prosecution of missionary labor. It is no small proof of the inherent strength of the forces that work with the Christian faith, and of the gracious hand of God over all, that, in spite of these manifold embarrassments within and discouragements without, the work as a whole has not only not gone backward but has made gains in almost every field and in well-nigh every form of missionary effort.
“The attendance upon the colleges and higher schools, both for young men and young women, is more than twenty per cent. in excess of that of last year, and the native contributions for all purposes are twenty-five per cent. in advance of what was reported a year ago. In some places where the pecuniary aid from the board was reduced, or even wholly withdrawn, the native community has addressed itself with good courage to the added responsibility, and has, out of its own slender resources, maintained the work at quite its former volume, and in some places with increased efficiency.
“Woman’s work, which in these missions forms a more considerable part of the whole work than perhaps in any other field occupied by the board, is in equal measure effective and successful. From the colleges for girls at Constantinople, Harpoot, and Marash, down through boarding schools and common schools to the kindergartens, we have substantially one uniform report of prosperity and growth.
“The diminishing missionary force at some points is becoming a matter demanding serious attention. While it is wise to devolve additional responsibility upon the native agency as that agency increases in number and capacity, there is obviously a limit to the diminution of the foreign force which can wisely be permitted, and that limit in these fields seems to have been reached.”
LETTER FROM CHINA.
By Ella Johnson Kinnear
NEAR the writer’s home in Foo-Choo, China, and in the midst of one of the graveyards with which all the hills near by are covered, is a tower about eight feet high. It is built something like a little pagoda, has a square opening near the top, and at one side there is a shrine in which incense and paper money may be burned. It is one of several such structures that may be found about the city, and is built to facilitate the disposal of babies’ bodies. They are wrapped in old pieces of matting or cloth and thrown into the opening at the top, some incense and paper money, perhaps, being burned in the shrine to prevent the spirits of the little ones from coming back to torment those who so unceremoniously dispose of them.
When the tower is so full that no more babies can be put in, some “philanthropist,” who wishes to “lay up merit” by “doing good works,” has the tower cleaned out, and its contents buried, while the tower is prepared for another filling. A place in the side which is imperfectly filled with bricks proves that this tower has been cleaned at least once, while it is so nearly full again that the wrappings of little bodies can be seen at the opening.
It is said that babies are sometimes thrown into this place before they are quite dead, but probably they are either drowned or smothered before such disposal is made of them. Boy babies are seldom, if ever, killed, but girl babies are frequently gotten rid of by drowning or smothering them, and then, in some cases, they are thrown into the “Baby Tower.” To be sure, there is a law against infanticide, but it is never enforced, for, no matter what may be written, custom is law in China.
Older children of the poorer classes, even up to the age of ten or twelve years, are often buried with as little ceremony as attends the disposition of the newborn babes. The coffins are made of the roughest boards, put together in the most careless way, and sold for a few cents each. Sometimes the covers are only tied on, and the coffin buried in a very shallow grave. The writer remembers seeing a little coffin that had been buried in a grave so shallow that the dogs and rain had uncovered it, and the lid, which was only laid on, was misplaced, exposing the partially decomposed body of a child five or six years old.
A missionary recently met two men carrying a box which he found was a coffin containing the body of a child. Instead of using the bamboo pole so common here, they907had thrust their hoes under a rope tied around the box, and were carrying it by their hoe handles. The men said they had no time for any kind of a funeral service, and that they were going to their work in the field, taking the coffin along to bury it, and thus save another trip.
These things seem harsh to us, but they are the legitimate outcome of the religions which have been called "good enough for the Chinese," and when the light regard for human life which is engendered in the Chinese by this sort of thing shows itself in the causeless murder of a missionary or other foreigner, people wonder at the small value placed upon human life in this land. Is it not more truly wonderful that human life is so safe as it is here?
Surely the children who live in America are highly favored by the heavenly Father, and have much reason to thank him for the love that cares for them, and to pray and labor to hasten the time when, even in China, death may be robbed of "its sting" by the knowledge of the brighter life beyond this one.—Ella Johnson Kinnear, in Union Gospel News.
CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT ANIMALS.
The greyhound runs by sight only. This is a fact. The carrier pigeon flies his hundred of miles homeward by eyesight, noting from point to point objects that he has marked. This is only conjecture, says the Philadelphia Times.
The dragon fly, with twelve thousand lenses in his eye, darts from angle to angle with the rapidity of a flashing sword, and as rapidly darts back, not turning in the air, but with a clash reversing the action of his four wings, and instantaneously calculating the distance of the objects, or he would dash himself to pieces. But in what conformation of the eye does this power consist? No one can answer.
Ten thousand mosquitoes dance up and down in the sun, with the minutest intervals between them, yet no one knocks another headlong on the grass, or breaks a leg or a wing, long and delicate as they are. Suddenly a peculiar, high-shouldered, vicious creature, with long and pendant nose, darts out of the rising and falling crowd, and, settling on your cheek, inserts a poisonous sting. What possessed the little wretch to do this? Did he smell your blood while he was dancing? No one knows.
A carriage comes suddenly upon some geese in a narrow road, and drives straight through the flock. A goose was never yet fairly run over, nor a duck. They are under the very wheels and hoofs, and yet they contrive to flap and waddle safely off. Habitually stupid, heavy, and indolent, they are, nevertheless, equal to any emergency.
Why does the lonely woodpecker, when he descends from his tree and goes to drink, stop several times on his way and listen and look around before he takes his draft? No one knows.—Selected.
THE HEART'S GATE.
"Who knocks at the heart's gate?" "I," said Sin.
"Will you let me in? Will you let me in?"
And I asked of the guerdon that Sin would give,
And I learnt that thence I should surely live
In joy and in mirth through my world's career,
If the pleadings of Sin I would only hear.
And I loved the picture, and spake to Sin:
"I will let thee in. I will let thee in."
"Who knocks at the heart's gate?" Quoth Virtue,
"I.
Will you pass me by? Will you pass me by?"
And I asked what boon I might hope to claim
If into my heart fair Virtue came;
And I learnt that sorrow and care and strife
Might perchance be mine through the days of life.
And I loathed the picture, and made reply:
"I will pass thee by. I will pass thee by."
"Who knocks at the heart's gate?" "I," said Doom
To my heart as it slept in the silent tomb.
"Thou hast harbored Sin through thy world's career,
And the pleading of Virtue refused to hear.
But in life thy conscience assured thee well
That Virtue was heaven, and that Sin was hell;
So now shall eternity's pains begin.
Thou must let me in. Thou must let me in."
—Selected.
The Pretended Friend
“THERE is not half so much danger in the desperate sword of a known foe as in the smooth insinuations of a pretended friend.”
Wandering in the Wilderness
“He that wanders too far into the wilderness of this world, cannot when he please creep back to the lodge of safety.”
Effectiveness in Lowly Positions
By Rev. Dr. John Hall
The best way for a man to get out of a lowly position is to be conspicuously effective in it.
The Heart and Mammon
By Parsons
God will not share the heart with mammon. He sent no manna till the provision of Egypt was spent.
THE WOODCOCK AND HER YOUNG.
THE woodcock builds her nest among the dry heather in the woods, and there of course her eggs are hatched. The baby birds are helpless creatures, of no use to themselves till their bills grow hard and their legs and wings become strong. They live chiefly on worms, and want beside a good deal of moisture.
These things can only be had in swampy ground, and as the youngsters cannot go to the marshes, the question is, How are they fed? It would be a wearisome job for the mother to fly to and fro with the large quantity of worms that her hungry infants need. She would have no time to get a meal for herself.
Well, regularly every evening she actually carries her young in her feet from the woods to the marsh and brings them back again before daybreak to the shelter of the wood, where they stay during the day. This habit was doubted for a long time and even denied, but it is now accepted as a well-established fact.—New York Journal.
NOTES.
By Editor
THE chargé d'affaires of the legation of the United States in Pekin issued, on August 4, the following: "This legation is in receipt of a dispatch from the Tsungli Yamen, dated August 3, stating that the merchants and missionaries of foreign countries, wherever residing in China, will be protected, and that the high provincial authorities have been ordered to issue proclamations warning the people in no manner to disturb them. The Yamen asks this legation to inform the American merchants and missionaries that they are at liberty to pursue their avocations as usual, and requests them to be under no fear or anxiety because of the hostilities now being carried on against Japan."
DR. J. H. DE FOREST writes from Japan: "While there are Japanese who hate foreigners, there is as yet no such national anti-foreign feeling as exists in China. If the present government should announce that the treaty had been revised with any one of the leading powers, and that the honor of Japan was guaranteed, the anti-foreign feeling would disappear largely within a week. It is more accurate, therefore, to speak of the so-called anti-foreign sentiment, since it is as yet superficial."
MANY of the Japanese Christians are saying: "We have learned to distinguish between missionaries. We want no more missionaries to come to Japan with the purpose of showing us how to do it, and of assuming authority over us in any way. But we do want many more broad-minded men and women who understand how to see things from our standpoint, how to sympathize with our ideas, and who are willing to work with us instead of over us."—Gospel in All Lands.
IN some places a feeling seems to exist that gifts to foreign missions mean so much less for home work. Even if this were so, it would be no excuse for neglecting the plain command of Christ; but, so far from this being the case, the actual result is usually found to be exactly the opposite. It is a general rule, of which we could give many instances, that earnest support to foreign missions is usually accompanied by increased gifts to home work. The reason of this is the fact that a real interest in foreign missions stirs up the heart, enlarges the sympathies, fosters gratitude for our blessings in a Christian land; and the result is increased liberality towards all God's work, whether at home or abroad. The more people feel their Christian privileges, the more they are inclined to give for them; and there is no better way to make people feel their privileges than by frequently reminding them of those who have them not,—of those who have the same trials and troubles as ourselves, but are "without Christ," and, therefore, without that blessed hope of eternal life which he alone can give.—Selected.
A MISSIONARY in India writes to his home society: "There is one thing which education does not seem to bring to India, and that is moral stamina. The ability to accept and harbor the most debasing social customs of this land is found among Hindus almost as frequently, if not as fully, under the university cap and gown as under the unkempt hair and rags of the village plowman. This is a vast and ghastly factor in the great problem of India's social and religious renovation."
DR. DENNIS says that "the Arabic language is the medium for reaching 40,000,000 souls. It is the spoken tongue of Northern Africa to Eastern Soudan, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia. It is the sacred language, although not necessarily the vernacular, of Mohammedans everywhere throughout the world. Consider what Christian missions have put into this one language within a half century. There is the Bible in thirty editions. There are 500 distinct volumes of religious, educational, scientific, historical, and popular literature, issued from the Beirut press of the American Presbyterian Mission. An average of 25,000,000 pages is printed at that press annually, and the total of pages printed since its establishment is slightly over 508,000,000. The Beirut Mission press has become a distributing center for Arabic literature throughout the world."—The Occident.
CONCERNING the provinces of Hunan and Kwong-Sai, China, Rev. W. H. Lingle, Presbyterian missionary, says: "It is well known that these two provinces contain the largest solid mass of heathen in the world to-day untouched by Christianity. It is also known that with their more than 20,000,000 of people they have been the most hostile to Christianity and modern civilization. The most of the vile and slanderous placards and literature issued in recent years against Christianity and Christians have come from Hunan." The Presbyterians have a mission in the province of Canton, on the borders of the provinces above mentioned.
CHRIST AND THE SABBATH: Or Christ in the Old Testament and the Sabbath in the New, by Elder James White. Paper covers, fifty-six pages, sent post-paid for ten cents. Address, PACIFIC PRESS, Oakland, Cal.
THE SECOND ADVENT.—Assorted Tract Package No. 3, contains 96 pages; price, 10 cents. Subjects considered—The Coming of the Lord, Is the End Near? Can We Know? The Signs of the Times, The Judgment, and The Second Advent of Our Lord. Address, Pacific Press, Oakland, Cal.
THE QUEEN'S BIRTHDAY
CHAPTER IX.
THE year 1848 is remembered as the first year when the 24th of May, the Queen's birthday, was kept as a holiday. The young men, with Mr. Nobbs at their head, started the celebration. The Bounty's old gun was made to do duty on the occasion in firing a salute in honor of Her Majesty, and every old musket that could be put to such a use, with as heavy charges as could be carried, was pressed into service to assist the Bounty's gun in making all the noise possible. The one bell on the island was kept ringing merrily, while, to add to the other sounds, cheer after cheer rang from the throats of the whole community, who had assembled to show loyalty to their sovereign.
The bell was a gift presented to the islanders in 1844 by the people on board the Basilisk, man-of-war, to be used for calling the worshipers to church.
A LETTER FROM THE SOCIETY ISLANDS.
By B. J. Cady
EVER since our missionary ship Pitcairn first visited this group, our work has been before the people to some extent. From that time a few have been keeping the true Sabbath. Representative missionaries are now in the field, and tracts upon a variety of subjects are published in the native language.
Human nature is the same the world over, and the people here want to be upon the popular side, as well as elsewhere. It was asked in Christ's time if any of the rulers believed on him. This question is frequently asked here, "What do the leading people think of your work?"
This people are called Christian. They believe that they have received great light, and are often heard to pray that God will send the gospel to the heathen in other lands. Yet, while they profess Christianity, their lives are, as a rule, quite foreign to its principles. They will not trust each other, and are continually at law one with another.
In those places where the natives are controlled by their own laws, it is expected that everyone who holds a government office must be a church member. These officers are very zealous in searching out those among the common people who have broken the law. The penalty is simply a fine, banishment being only occasionally added to the fine, and the witness receives about half of the money as a compensation for his services. The remainder goes to the government, and is spent in buying food for the officials, when they have a gathering to talk over government matters. Since I have been here, I have not known the native governments to pay out one cent for public improvements.
In a certain district on Raiatea the attendance at their church had grown very small at one time. So a law was passed that all well persons must attend church twice upon Sunday, or pay a fine of twenty-five cents for each service they failed to attend. When asked what they did with this money, they informed me that it was saved until enough had accumulated to buy food for a feast, when all would enjoy a feast together at the church.
Many of the natives seem to think that when they have paid their fine, they are clear, and the sin stands no more against them. If this theory were true, then the sin would be transferred to the church, as its members are the ones who receive and use this money.
Sorcerers are plentiful here, and they are also popular church members. A short time ago one sent word to the queen of Raiatea that a part of her name was the name of an old heathen god, which they now call the devil, and that unless that name should be removed, she would sicken and die an untimely death, as her sister, who was queen before her, had done. So her leading men were called together to talk over the matter, and, although they claimed to have no faith in such an idea, she, with them, decided to change the name so as to avoid danger.
It is supposed by them that in many cases of sickness the presence of the devil is the direct cause. They think he is in the person, and to insure recovery he must be driven out. So a stone, weighing about twenty pounds, is heated until it has become exceedingly hot, then wrapped in leaves and tied inside of a cloth. Some assistants then hold the patient, while the sorcerer applies the hot stone to the spot where the pain is felt, as the devil is supposed to be where the pain is. While the patient screams and wriggles around, vainly trying to get away from the instrument of torture, these struggles are attributed to the devil. When the flesh is seen to twitch, the sorcerer cries out that the devil is there, and vigorously applies the heat to that spot. This is continued without mercy until the devil has been driven out, through the feet, head, or some other portion of the body. The sick person is often severely burned by this process.
These few items will suffice to show what kind of Christian people these are, and how little they know of true Christianity.
How hard it is to break away from old habits and ideas! It is so natural for us to follow in the footsteps of our forefathers, taking for granted that a thing must be true because they believed and practiced it!
Some may wonder how they can believe such things, now that they have the Bible, and claim to follow its teachings. But let us not be in too great a hurry to condemn them because they profess Christianity and do not live up to its standard. It is so easy to set up one's own standard and expect others to live according to it. Are not many in more enlightened countries, who profess to believe and practice the teachings of the Scriptures, holding onto things of heathen origin, and as unwilling to give them up as this people are to abandon some of their heathen notions?
Take, for example, the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath. God in his word has never given a command, or even a hint, either in the Old or New Testaments, that he wishes his followers to observe that day. It was dedicated to the worship of the sun by the sun worshipers; and Constantine, who was more of a heathen than a Christian, passed a law that all should rest on the venerable day of the sun. Other laws were afterward passed which compelled the people to either rest upon Sunday or lose their offices, property, or lives. This condition of things continued until many looked upon this man-made institution as coming from God.
Some may think that the south sea islanders who burn poor sick people with hot stones would not be audacious enough to pray over it. But this is a mistake, for they never engage in this work without first reading a portion of Scripture and praying. So it may be with us—we may be obeying some cherished tradition which is contrary to the teachings of Scripture, and trusting to it instead of God's word.
It becomes us to know that we are building on the Rock Christ Jesus, and not on the traditions of men. Christ said, "The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day."
It is said that where sickness is treated in this way by the sorcerers, nine out of ten never recover; but everyone who knowingly builds on the sands of tradition, and trusts to these things for salvation instead of to the word of God, will die the second death. How carefully we should all study God's holy word, and put into practice its teachings, for by it we are to be judged, and not by our ideas of right and wrong.
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Eccl. 12:13, 14.
