THE FAMILY NEWSPAPER

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 20, 1881

THE FAMILY NEWSPAPER.

The weekly family newspaper is an important visitor. It brings intelligence from the four quarters of the earth. That ought to be a poor family which cannot take a weekly religious newspaper. It furnishes a large amount of reading for the money expended. It furnishes intelligence on various and important subjects. It gives information concerning the advance movements of the church. Can any Christian family be properly brought up in this age, when knowledge runs to and fro, and not be informed as to what is being done along the advance line of the Redeemer's kingdom?

When battles were raging in our land a few years since, how eager were people to get the intelligence from the front ranks of contending hosts. How faithfully the wires were used to send back to listening and expectant thousands, what victories were won, or what defeats suffered. Are the battles which are being fought with the powers of darkness of any less moment? Satan is being despoiled of his captives, and souls are being brought back to Christ. Fort after fort is being taken. Churches are being organized and houses of worship built. Missionaries are breaking through the barriers that have long been defying the gospel of Jesus Christ. Savages are becoming Christians. The places full of the habitations of cruelty are becoming resonant with the praises of the Redeemer.

Is it right for families calling themselves Christian, when it is within their power to take some organ of the church that will tell them how Christ's kingdom is advancing in the world, is it right for them to go ignorant of these things? Can they sincerely pray "Thy kingdom come," and not be interested enough in the coming of it to spend two or three dollars a year, that they may have weekly intelligence from the battle fields of Christ, that they may know what is being done to bring into the fold of salvation those for whom the Saviour died?

Christian parents, do not try to bring up, in this enlightened day, this day of cheap literature, a family under a roof professedly Christian, a family of children looking to you, and depending on you for guidance and information, without giving them an opportunity to know whether Satan or Christ is taking the world.—Messenger.