CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER
By Editor
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Editorial.—Notes and Comments—The Power and Methods of the Gospel—Characteristic Interpretation and Spirit...177, 178 Doctrinal.—The Flying Threefold Message, Rev. 14: 6-12 (poetry)—The Three Messages of Rev. 14: 6-14 (No. 4, Application and Fulfillment of the Second)—The Christian's Citizenship—Study of the Bible, Its Importance and Benefits, No. 4 (concluded)—The Witness of the Holy Spirit—Trapped...179-182 Miscellaneous.—My Journal (poetry)—The Outpouring of the Spirit—Our Obligation to Improve Our Talents—Don't Press the Influential Ones—Selfishness—Rome and the Papacy...182-185 The Home Circle.—Nobody's Darling (poetry)—Spare the Rod—Children in Church—The Brakeman's Christmas Story—The Influence of the Mother...185, 186 Health and Temperance.—A Temperance Story—Tobacco—Results of Prohibition—What Is Man?—Oatmeal Bags for the Bath...186, 187 Mission Fields.—Scatter Seed (poetry)—Rome and the South American Republics—Romanism, Heathenism...187, 188 Our Work and Workers.—The Manliest Man (poetry)—Spiritual Life—Field Notes...189 International S. S. Lessons.—Dedicating the Temple (Lesson 6, February 5)—The Power of God's Word, Continued (Lesson 6, February 4)...190 News and Notes.—Religious—Secular...191 Editorial.—Various Notes and Comments—Question Corner (72. Beginning the Day at Midnight—73. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—74. Hope for Backsliders)...192 JESUS said, "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's." According to this rule to whom does Sunday belong? Who has the right to exact its observance of us? ASSEMBLYMAN BOYCE, of San Francisco, has introduced into the California Legislature a bill to provide a rest of one day in seven for every laborer, without specifying what day it shall be. We hope to present the full text of the bill next week. It is said that at an early date a new Sunday law will be proposed. OUR HOME CIRCLE department presents this week a large variety of small dishes of seasonable food, picked up from various sources. Too great variety at meals is generally not good, but we think that our readers will find no clashing in this respect. We wish to make our home department a means of blessing to all classes. AFTER this week the two departments Home Circle and Health and Temperance will be merged into one, under the name of Home and Health. We shall have just as much to say on temperance as in the past, but, as true temperance should always be found in the home, and as it is intimately connected with health, the new department will be a highly proper place to discuss temperance in its various phases. Such changes as are here proposed are generally made at the beginning of a volume, but we believe that the change is an improvement, and as it can well be made now, it is well to make it now. WE wish we were able to give our readers an account of the hearing on the Duborrow bill for the Sunday closing of the World's Fair. The latest news we have is that the committee will report on the bills sometime this week. We earnestly hope that the only consistent measure, the absolute repeal of all Sunday legislation, will be reported by the committee, and we earnestly wish that Congress will act consistently by repealing such legislation. It may be too much to expect in view of the enormous pressure brought upon Congressmen by our ecclesiastical politicians for closing the World's Fair. We will give the matter to our readers as soon as possible. In the meantime let them pray that all this agitation may work for the spread of the truth of God and the enlightening of those in darkness. IT does not matter at all as regards the truth of God which they bear to the world, whether Seventh-day Adventists number 10,000 or 10,000,000; but we mention it as an item worthy of note that the Rev. W. F. Crafts gives the number in his book, published in 1892, as less than 18,000, when they were at that time about double that number. A letter of inquiry would easily have obtained him the information. But in this earth truth does not depend upon majorities. ON another page will be found a brief account of the last service, a memorial service, with the crew and missionaries who go with the brig-schooner Pitcairn on her second cruise. While it is sad to part from those we love, it is cheering indeed to send out those who are consecrated to God. Few ships there are that sail the sea which have a Christian missionary crew. The Pitcairn sailed Tuesday morning, January 17. May God go with them and give them many souls for their hire. A description and cut of the new ship will be given in our next. IF those ministers and religious organizations that are laboring so hard to close the World's Fair on Sunday would put forth the same amount of labor for the salvation of souls by preaching the truth as it is in Jesus, they would make a thousand times more Sabbath keepers than can be produced by a civil law. The converts of civil law are like converts in jail. They do not do because they cannot. But the converts of Jesus Christ cannot do because they will not. There is a vast difference between the two; but the former is the gospel of all those who seek to further religion by legal means, while the latter is the gospel of Christ. Reader, in which gospel do you believe? The Probable Truth in the Matter.—The Christian Statesman refers to the "American Sabbath Union" meeting of some time since in Chicago, the resolutions of which in favor of Sunday laws were voted down, and as the meeting was packed by Seventh-day Adventists. We were not there, but we venture to say that the Seventh-day Adventists of Chicago made no attempt whatever to "pack" the meeting. They are willing to hear both sides of the question, and doubtless attended the nearest meeting held by the Sunday people that night. When the resolutions were put, they voted against them, as everyone present had a right to do, and they and others who did not favor Sunday laws outvoted the friends of Sunday. That is doubtless the truth of the matter. It was just such an affair as the above that occurred a few years ago. Mr. Crafts' resolutions were voted down in a mass meeting of his own calling in the First Congregational Church of this city, but there was not the slightest effort made by Seventh-day Adventists to pack the house, not so much as an invitation to attend, and quite a number opposed to all Sunday laws did not vote at all. Sabbath Union mass meetings, according to our observations, have been meetings without the mass. It is easier to get representative votes of great churches signed by the pastor, but taken perhaps at some prayer meeting when only from a dozen to a score were present. But as regards all moral questions, majorities count nothing with those who love truth, whatever effect they have upon the Sunday-law people. THE following we clip from a late number of the New York Voice, and notice it, not so much because it is important, but to correct a current error:— Mother Shipton, or Evan Preece, was a prophetess of South Wales, who lived some three hundred years ago. Her predictions were generally in verse, and in many of them came true, as in the cases of the deaths of Cardinal Woolsey, Lord Percy, and others, that her prophecy that the end of the world shall come in 1881, was widely accepted and the year 1881 looked forward to by many with fear and dread. The writer, in company with Elder J. H. Durland, now of Oakland, Cal., visited the British Museum Library in 1884, and, as a matter of curiosity, asked to see the works of "Mother Shipton." They were placed in our hands, old, yellow, faded, bearing all the marks of genuineness. In one of the books was the noted prophecy in couplets, but the last two lines,—
"The world unto an end will come
In eighteen hundred eighty-one,"
were wanting. "Mother Shipton" never said it. They were the words of an Englishman of the present century.