Present Truth by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 3, 1907

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

Present Truth

By Editor

We send no papers from this office to individuals without pay in advance. When persons receive copies without ordering them, they are sent by other parties, and we can give no information in regard to them. Persons thus receiving copies of the SIGNS are not indebted to the office, and will not be called upon to pay for them. Please read the papers you may receive, and hand them to your friends to read.

Our authority is the Bible, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. When the Common ("King James" or "Authorized") Version, or the American Standard Revised Version is used, quotations will not be designated in reference. Any Bible quotation in this paper, therefore, differing from the Common Version, unless otherwise indicated, will be almost invariably from the American Standard Revised Version (Thomas Nelson & Sons, Publishers).

We regret that the printing on the SIGNS has not been so good of late. But the change from our flat-bed press to the rotary, the repairing of machinery in press-room and foundry, the poor quality of metal from which plates have been made,—all have their part. But the "boys" are doing splendid work, and we hope soon to be running in better shape.

Present Truth.

A very liberal journal recently remarked to the effect that a live preacher could find foundation for many sermons morally applicable to these days of tyranny and oppression. This is true. Amos and other of the prophets contain teachings which are not only morally applicable, but prophetically applicable. The prophet spoke and sometimes wrote for the time in which he lived. He wrote for the days to come, and very often for the most perilous time of earth's history, these latter days.

It is not wholly a novel thing to furnish one's own funeral sermon, as did John Alexander Dowie, but his was unique for all that. It stormed and threatened, declared he would return in "another form, brighter and more beautiful and ten thousand times more terrible," to "exterminate the vipers and dogs of hell that now hold high places in Zion." Is it not strange that such a manifestly insane old man should hold such power over people for years? It would not have been thus if men had but studied God's word.

Life and Power Needed.

In a recent number, a well-known New York journal voices the cry of many almost-despairing souls in the question, "What have the higher critics left us?" And that journal thinks that about everything we need is left, and we are especially referred to many beautiful things in the ethics of the Gospel, the Golden Rule, the Beatitudes in substance, etc. Of course the atonement is gone; Jesus is an inspiration, a help, a teacher, but not a saviour. If this be true, then indeed are we hopeless. The ethics of the Bible are rainbows if Jesus Christ is not all that He is declared to be. It is not so much the knowing to do right that is needed, as the power to do right. The Bible reveals both in Christ Jesus.

To Our Brethren and Friends in Oregon and Washington.

Our people in Mountain View are about to build a church. Previous to the burning of the Pacific Press building, they met in the chapel of that building. In the rebuilding of the Press the chapel was omitted. Therefore they must build. Prices of the building material in the vicinity of San Francisco are almost prohibitive. The editor of this paper believes that we have among our readers and friends in Oregon and Washington those who could furnish us lumber in car-load lots for this purpose at a fair profit to themselves and greatly to our advantage. If there are those who can thus help us, we would like to hear from them at once as to prices of dimension lumber, shingles, and flooring, their facilities for shipping, and other necessary things to know. Address the chairman of building committee, care of M. C. Wilcox, Mountain View, Cal. Please write soon.

Mormonism and Maoris.

A writer in the Christian Worker, of Auckland, N. Z., tells us that "Mormonism, with its absurd interpretations of isolated scriptures, has taken great hold" of the Maoris. In talking with one of them, he urged him to take full notice of the context in which the isolated texts were found. The Mormon replied: "No! no! you read too much, then you can't prove anything." Blessed be that man that can take the whole of God's revelation.

The Awful Rains.

With a little adaptation and a good deal of emphasis the following from Whittier's "Among the Hills" is a picture of California conditions: "For weeks the clouds had raked the hills And vexed the vales with raining; And all the woods were sad with mist, And all the brooks complaining. "At last, a sudden night-storm tore The mountain veils asunder, And swept the valleys clean before The besom of the thunder." We have not had the thunder; but we have had rain, and rain, and rain. "Our redwoods drip and drip with rain." Yet it has not been the great quantity so much as the fact that it has been almost constant. Since it began, a little before the middle of December, neither land nor roads have been dry. A great deal of plowing remains to be done, or now will not be done at all. Until recently the earth has absorbed the rain, but the last rains fell upon a well-drenched soil, flowed off into arroyos, canyons, and rivers, and appalling, destructive floods have followed. Railway lines have washed out, tunnels have caved in, early fruits ruined, Stockton, Oroville, and other towns have been inundated, and thousands of square miles of the best lands in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys have been flooded; many lives have been lost, millions of dollars worth of damage has resulted, and the end is not yet. The damage to California will be very great. When this paper will reach the most of its readers we know not; we shall endeavor, the Lord willing, to do our part.

Josephus and Christianity.

In another column is an article on Josephus and Christianity, in which the writer clearly shows that Josephus in his history never referred to the Christians. But to our mind it is not necessary to assume great secrecy on the part of the Christians, or entire ignorance of them on his part as a reason why Josephus did not mention them in his history. He was a Pharisee by choice. While endeavoring to give an impartial history, his general view would lead him to minimize or utterly ignore all movements like Christianity which did not in his mind have a molding or critical effect upon that nation. In his mind Christianity did not have such effect. It was but an incident of which he doubtless knew so little that he would not cumber his history in an attempt to explain it. Truly has the poet said: "We see dimly in the present what is small and what is great." Josephus evidently saw dimly, knew little, and did not count it worth his while to search out facts which to him were but a mere incident, and which if told, he may have feared would have brought discredit upon his people and priesthood. Great age-molding, religious events are often passed over in silence by historians, while inferior and inconsequential acts of war are rehearsed in minutest detail.

What a blessing it would be if it were done! The Christian Advocate, of New York, truly says that "the mission of the church is to call men from a life of sense, of gratification, ambition, wealth, or dominion, to the life which covers the life which now is and that which is to come. This call must make the way easy for the repentant, and awaken in the unrepentant unrest and rational fear. It must call men first to the law, with its penalties, until they are compelled to recognize their unfitness for the highest form of earthly life, and wholly incapable of attaining the heavenly life without a radical change. Then at the first sign of repentance, the silver trumpet of peace and liberty should be blown." And that is true, but does the Christian Advocate believe that when there is repentance, and true liberty given by the Lord Jesus Christ, that that liberty should be used to transgress the law? That is what many are teaching at the present time; that in Christ Jesus there is liberty, and that liberty does not regard God's law. As, for instance, it makes no difference whether we keep the fourth commandment or not. In that case Christ is made the minister of sin, and justification a license to continue in sin. The man who truly preaches the Gospel must bring men to see their need of the Gospel by the condemning power of the law, and then if the Gospel message has its right effect upon the heart, it will bring men into harmony with the law which they have transgressed.

The Washington (D. C.) Herald reports in part a sermon by Rev. Abram Simon, rabbi of the Eighth Street Temple, in which some forceful facts are set forth, and one is that one of the danger signs of the times is that Americans are forgetting their democracy, and the caste and class spirit has taken possession of our universities. The youth of the common people is ostracized at the universities and private schools, a spirit which he declares is foreign and unworthy of the spirit of our forefathers. He intimates that it is a sad thing that while the spirit of democracy is gaining elsewhere on the globe that it is decreasing here. So the prophecy of the word declares that while this country should have horns like a lamb, representing equality and freedom, it should speak as a dragon, representative of imperialism and persecution.

Yale Spendthrifts.

The wealthiest students of Yale are said to spend more for drinking and smoking than for room rent and furniture. As would be expected, the "honor" men spend much less in vice than the low-standard men. Men who spend $2,000 a year devote 25 per cent. of their expenditures to clothes, while those in the $500 class spend only 6 per cent. for clothes.

A despatch from Guthrie, Okla., dated March 11, states that on final passage the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, by a vote of 71 to 13, decided to submit Statewide prohibition amendment to a vote of the people. This is considered a great victory for the temperance forces, who are jubilant over the measure.

Temperance was a live issue in Knoxville, Tenn., on election day, March 12. The issue was on the "wet" and "dry" proposition, temperance people paraded the streets, church bells were tolled, speeches were made. The vote resulted in a majority of 1,929, of nearly 11,000 votes cast, in favor of prohibition.

A cave-in in a tunnel near San Luis Obispo, Cal., March 19, covered up six oil tanks in the middle of a train, leaving the engineers and firemen of the double-header and the conductor and two breakmen in the caboose uninjured. It really cut out the middle of the train.

Russia is not the only place where the deadly bomb is used. March 19, a bomb was exploded on the front porch of Judge F. B. Ogden, Oakland, Cal., by unknown parties. Fortunately no one was injured, tho the house was much damaged.

The powder magazine of the French battleship Iena blew up at Toulon, March 12. The entire afterpart of the ship was blown to pieces. About eighty men were killed and hundreds more were injured. The exact cause of the explosion is not known.

In an underground shaft of a coal mine near Forbach, Germany, an explosion of fire damp resulted in the death of seventy-five miners. Twelve others were injured and several missing.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, author of many volumes of prose and poetry, from 1881 to 1890 editor of the Atlantic Monthly, died at his home in Boston, Mass., March 19.