CAMP-MEETINGS FOR 1888 by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 24, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 33.

CAMP-MEETINGS FOR 1888.

By Editor

SOUTHERN MICHIGAN, Homer,	Aug. 28 to Sept. 4
VERMONT, West Randolph,	" 28 " 4
IOWA, West Liberty,	" 29 " 4
ILLINOIS, Springfield,	Sept. 4-11
MAINE, Bangor,	" 4-11
NEW YORK, Rome,	" 11-18
INDIANA, Indianapolis,	" 11-18
NORTH CAROLINA, Hickory,	" 11-18
NEBRASKA, Grand Island,	" 11-19
KANSAS, Neodesha, Wilson Co.,	" 13-23
COLORADO, Denver,	" 18-25
CALIFORNIA, Oakland,	Sept. 20 to Oct. 2
MICHIGAN, Grand Rapids,	" 25 " 2
KANSAS (German), Aiken,	Oct. 3-8
MISSOURI, Kansas City,	" 2-9
TENNESSEE, Guthrie, Ky.,	" 2-9

Are you getting ready for camp-meeting? We mean the camp-meeting to be held in Oakland, from September 20 to October 2. If not, it is high time that you were, for you cannot afford to miss the meeting. It has been appointed early, so as to accommodate the greater number, and we look for a large attendance. From the arrangements that the committee is making, we believe that the coming meeting is the most important in material interests of any meeting ever held in this city, and it will be the best spiritually or temporally considered.

Just so; that will be about the extent of its suppression of the slave trade. From what was Palestine rescued by the Pope and his armies? If anybody can tell us in what respect the Holy Land is better off now than it was eight hundred years ago, we should be pleased to be informed. It seems to us that that country needs rescuing now about as much as it ever did.

After speaking of the Pope's action in the matter of the African slave trade, the Christian at Work adds:—

"And when this work has been accomplished, perhaps Pope and Protestant will unite in one supreme effort to persuade Christian England to give up once and forever the infamous opium traffic, with its slavery, as deplorable, as wicked, and as cruel as the slave trade barbarities at Nubia."

Perhaps; indeed there is very little doubt that Pope and Protestant will unite to banish, or cover up to their satisfaction, all the immoralities in the world, and so bring in the long-looked-for millennium. And when that has been done, then what? For an answer read the second chapter of Isaiah.

At the recent congressional investigation into the condition of Italian immigrants, in New York, one of the Italian laborers was asked if he went to church. His reply was that he went to church when he was in Italy. On being asked if he attended church here, he replied, "I tried to get in, but they wanted me to pay." Perhaps all our readers are not aware of the fact that, especially on great church festival days, everyone who enters a Catholic Church has to pay an admission fee at the door. We cannot say how extensively this is practiced, but we have seen it done on Easter day in New York. And yet that church calls itself the church of the poor, when it turns people away from the church door, if they are unable to pay the admission fee. To the glory of Protestant denominations be it said that as yet they have not become popular enough to be able to exact an admission fee to regular church services. The end of the gospel there is in a service the farther will the church be from being able to charge the public for the same. Truth has to fight its way in this world; it must have free course, and exact its own terms. The Catholics and Spiritualists, among religionists, are able to get a crowd when they charge an admission fee. But let them not glory in this fact, for even they are not yet able to compete with the circus, which exacts a still higher fee.

Some person in San Francisco has been pasting in a scrap-book the titles of many of the discourses that have been delivered in that city during the past three or four years. Among them are the following: "Invisible Patching;" "A New Bill of Fare;" "The Functions and Power of Humanity;" "Deer Coming to the Lick;" "The Language of Flowers;" "The Chinese Must Go;" "Whom Shall We Nominate;" "Choosing a Wife;" "How to Find a Wife;" "The Great Unpatented Motor;" "Beauty;" "Beckey Sharp Turned Preacher;" "How to Find a Husband;" "How to Prosper in the World." These are only a few which are given by the Occident's correspondence, which gives but a small portion of those church notices of four of the principal churches of San Francisco. We heartily recommend it, but comment upon it, which is...

The California Viticultural Association has secured the services of Miss Kate Field as special lecturer in the East in the interests of the wine industry of this coast. Her reply to the association's request is as follows:—

"I thoroughly appreciate the compliment you pay me in thinking that I can advance the cause of California's noblest industry by acting as your delegate in the great cities of the East. "Believing most profoundly that the only road to true temperance is by the substitution of light, pure wines and beers for distilled spirits, I yet was not sure of the wisdom of my undertaking the work suggested by your commission, and wrote at once to men in the East, whose names are household words, whose hearts are as sound as their heads, whose patriotism knows no point of the compass. They bid me 'good speed.' "I therefore accept the proposition made in your second communication, dated July 27, and will preach the gospel of the grape to the best of my ability. Very truly yours, KATE FIELD."

We believe that she was selected for this work on account of her having made the wonderful discovery that all the ills of life are caused, not by intemperance, but by dyspepsia. She will not have so difficult a task in securing converts to the "gospel" which she proposes to preach, as those do who preach the gospel of Christ, and with her talents she may be depended on to greatly increase the amount of intemperance in this country, and thereby to increase the amount of dyspepsia, and all its attendant ills.

One of the readers of the Sunday School Times propounds the following query to that paper:—

"Is there any Bible order of Sunday service? In other words, is there anything in the Bible which indicates that the preaching service should precede the Sunday school?"

To this question the editor responds as follows:—

"There is no Bible order of Sunday services which is to be followed as Moses followed the divinely given pattern in his tabernacle building. 'The preaching service' which is made so much of in our day was not known in Bible times. It is a later invention. Nor was 'the Sunday-school' then in vogue precisely in its modern form."

Very good; but it would have been better still if the editor of the Sunday School Times had told his correspondent the great reason why the Sunday-school was not in vogue "in its modern form." That reason is that the Sunday itself was not then in vogue "in its modern form." Such a thing as regular religious worship on Sunday was not known until many years after the apostles were all dead; and it was not until hundreds of years after Christ that anybody ever thought that the day had any sacredness attached to it.

The California Christian Advocate, in speaking of the anniversary meetings of the Presbyterians, says:

"The late General Assemblies of this staunch and steady body of Christians call our attention again to the fact that we are divided in a great many ecclesiastical bodies in this country, for the most fantastic reasons. We have white churches, black churches, and red churches, and north and south churches. North and south are ecclesiastical terms nowhere else, we believe. We might have churches due east, southeast, and northwest. We simply call attention to the fact that names are not exhausted. We have a Cumberland Presbyterian Church, but no Missouri River Church. Going into geography with the business gives us almost an infinite number of otherwise useless names."