Various Matters by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 5, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 22.

Various Matters.

By Editor

THE editor of the SIGNS, in company with Elder W. C. White, Mrs. E. G. White, Elder J. N. Loughborough, Professor Brownsberger, and Elder Wm. Ings and wife, left San Francisco on the steamer Oregon, Friday, May 30, to attend the camp-meetings in Washington Territory and Oregon. They will return about the middle of July. Until the first of July, personal correspondence to them should be addressed to East Portland, Oregon.

LET everybody that is interested in temperance work examine our "Assorted Temperance Packages" advertised in another column. W. C. T. Unions, Good Templar Societies, and other temperance organizations could do no better work for the cause of temperance than to circulate these packages. We are confident that nowhere else can so much temperance literature be obtained, of so good a quality, for the price at which these packages are offered.

OUR temperance department is crowded out this week by the extra amount of Sabbath-school matter. We will make up for it next week. Meanwhile, that no one may be in doubt as to how we stand on this question, we will say that the use of intoxicating liquor is destructive to both soul and body, and a sin against God, and that the liquor traffic, more than anything else, is responsible for the vice and misery in the land. We believe, moreover, that no man, or class of men, or State, has any right to license any one to commit sin, or prey upon another.

A BROTHER writes that he has obtained over 400 trial subscribers to the SIGNS in the city of Baraboo, Wis. In one day he has taken as many as twenty-eight subscriptions, and never less than fourteen in one day. Such reports as this are encouraging, not only to the publishers of the SIGNS, but to all who are working to spread the truths which it advocates. Our friends in all parts of the field have evidently "a mind to work," and we confidently expect that their efforts will double our subscription list during the present year.

WE hope that the two articles in this week's paper, entitled, "The Publishing Association," and "Impressive Lesson from Isa. 10:3," will receive more than a casual reading. Especially would we recommend them to those who believe that the publishing work is to be the chief agent in carrying the last message. As to the safety of the office as a place of deposit, we have the testimony of all who have means deposited here. At the last annual meeting, there were many who said that they had never had a moment's anxiety concerning money deposited in the office of publication. In marked contrast with this is the statement of a prominent politician at the Chicago convention, that business men of New York dared not turn their backs on that city to attend the convention, lest they should fail up. As has been demonstrated, their presence at home is no surety of safety.

The office is not recommended as a safe place of deposit on the simple ground that its managers are upright men, for many honest men have been ruined in the recent panic, through no fault of their own; but we recommend it especially because it is engaged in the work of the Lord, which cannot fail. The deposits may not yield a very large income at present, but they will bring an infinite per cent. in the world to come.

THE Pennsylvania Conference of Seventh-day Adventists is one of the smallest in point of numbers, but it is alive to the wants of the cause, and the workers are thoroughly in earnest. The T. and M. Secretary writes that one man in that Conference took 124 orders for "Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation," in twenty days, and in the meantime took seventy orders for the SIGNS, though he was not making a specialty of the SIGNS canvass. We can say for ourselves that it would be a matter of interest to know what such a canvasser could do for the SIGNS if he should make it a specialty for a little while. Besides the club taken by the State, Pennsylvania ordered 2,000 copies of the SIGNS, with supplement attached, for the purpose of advertising their camp-meeting. Such efforts to spread the truth cannot fail of success.