MOUNTAIN VIEW, CAL., OCTOBER 24, 1906
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CAL., OCTOBER 24, 1906
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. News from Valparaiso and accounts of the earthquake there next week. In reply to many questions, the address of Mrs. E. G. White is "Elmshaven," Sanitarium, Napa Co., Cal. Our thanks are due for outlines and copies of constitutional amendment to be voted on Nov. 6, 1906, to Mr. H. A. Mason, secretary of the committee dealing with the matter. Mr. Mason's address is Room 3, 502 California St., San Francisco. Some things live in history because of their innate worth, others because of the merest connection with them or because opposed to them. Judas Iscariot would never have been remembered if it were not for his opposition to Jesus, the One of eternal fame. We begin next week an interesting series of articles on Japan, its present condition, Japan as a mission field, and the work which has been done. These articles are from a missionary on the ground, Mr. Field, of Tokyo. We had this series in hand before the fire, but they were burned, and the writer has kindly consented to rewrite them, as also a series on the "Hermit Kingdom," Korea. These will be illustrated. The first is "Japan in History." We print on our first page an excerpt from a most excellent editorial in the Sunday School Times. Our space there would not hold all we wanted to use of it, and we complete the thought here. Read that and the paragraph which follows this: "There are, it is true, two kinds of obstacles. One kind is put in the way of the transgressor, and then they are God's call to abandon that way. The other kind is of the sort already described; and they are charged with a divine magnetism that ought to draw us straight towards them, if we have in us enough of God's overcoming purpose to enable us to recognize their attractiveness." It is said, by persons supposed to be in close touch with administration sentiment in Washington, that Cuba will be given another chance at playing independent government, but it is not expected that it will succeed any better than did the first experiment. No less a personage than Major-General Corbin, former adjutant-general of the army, and more recently commander-in-chief in the Philippines, looks upon the annexation of Cuba as a foregone conclusion. "American interests" in Cuba and "prominent manufacturers" in the United States are also working to that end, and are probably at the bottom of the proposition. Just as the critical season of building operations comes on in the city of San Francisco, the strike makes its appearance. The strike is the foe of all legitimate business enterprise, as it is also the foe of most of those who engage in it, whether they "win" or "lose" on the surface. It started with a strike of the planing-mill men, but has affected more or less all the building trades. On the 9th inst., all the planing-mills in San Francisco and Alameda County (across the Bay) were closed. The result was that building was almost brought to a standstill. One paper stated that "the building material now on hand which is being used by the building contractors, will soon be exhausted. Mill timber must be had, and the present strike is not only affecting the immediate vicinity but the entire coast as well." All trades affiliated with the Building Trades Council are affected, and sustain the strike. Contractors in all branches declare that circumstances have never been so adverse to employers; and that, too, at a season when it is so necessary to get homeless people and poorly protected business enterprises under substantial cover. Archbishop John J. Keene, ex-rector of the Catholic University at Washington, recently home from Europe, tells us that the pope will not live long. He was forced to the papal throne, did not wish it, can not endure it, and does not wish to. He says, however, that while he would like to create two American cardinals, he will not create even one. If two were created, they would be the Archbishop Farley of New York and Archbishop Ireland. The one enemy, he tells us, that the Papacy has in France is Free Masonry, not the Free Masonry of Great Britain or America. "In France, Masonry is godless; its whole aim is to destroy all religion, and to worship its own thought. Here the great men in the nation are Masons and God-fearing, God-loving men." And yet Free Masons tell us that it is one the world over, having presumably about the same unity that the Roman Catholic Church does. IT would seem that the calamity which visited San Francisco in earthquake and fire would humble men's hearts and lead them to seek after the more substantial things of this life, and make, at least, some preparation for the life to come. This doubtless has been true in some cases, but the general reports indicate that excesses of all kinds have multiplied in the city by the Golden Gate since the fire. One San Francisco paper declares, under date of September 22, that a new tenderloin has been established along both sides of Golden Gate Avenue, that from Van Ness Avenue to Fillmore Streets it is in possession of the saloon men, who are rapidly converting it into houses of prostitution. This has risen under the very eyes of the police, who have given the widest liberty to build up these plague spots in the very heart of the city. This is entirely new ground for houses of this character, and once established it will be almost impossible to dislodge them. Even midnight restrictions are not effective there. "Long after that hour, and even to daybreak, the sounds of wild laughter and clinking glasses may be heard behind barred doors." "The free and easy life of the new tenderloin is even more lax than that of the old." Women are allowed to parade the streets unmolested by the police, and patrolmen while still in uniform participate in the early morning orgies. "There are no restrictions and no rules in this new district." "Women pickpockets, whose pictures are in the rogues' gallery, walk up and down the streets, pass in and out of the saloons, stop and converse with men with no fear of a detective to order them from the street." There is no check on gambling. One of the most notorious places seems to be protected by the police, run by a man personally known to half the members of the police department. Whenever a raiding squad visits the place, word has been carried an hour or two before, so that everything is found in proper order when the police arrive. Patrons coming while the police are there are asked to wait a few minutes until the police leave. "Ten minutes after the raiding squad was on the street the gambling-rooms were filled and the games went on without interruption until after midnight." Robberies and hold-ups are frequent, murders are committed in open day, and the criminals are still at large. Oakland has its nightly hold-ups, and the general tone of morality in the place is a great deal lower than before the earthquake. There may be no other earthquake for years; the warning which has come of the instability of all things earthly may pass on unheeded, but the fiery destruction of all things earthly will come, and "it hasteth greatly." We may ridicule God's messengers and His Word, but when the awful judgment faces us and men meet their own records and reap the fruit of their own sowing, all the beauty of sin will be turned into ashes of hopeless regret. It is no pleasure to pen these things; we hope they will cause some to pause and reflect. A strange thing has occurred in Italy. Ten aged nuns have just been rescued from a veritable living tomb, a cable despatch tells us, at Castle Gondolphel, where they had lived thirty-six years unknown by the villagers and absolutely forgotten by the Vatican. The convent was the dampest and dismalest part of the castle. The papal Secretary of State Merry Del Val went there for his vacation, found it inhabited by ten venerable sisters, old, infirm, and nearly starved. That certainly would not have occurred if these women had been living the natural life the Lord designed men and women should live. Dr. Karl Peters, the great authority on African affairs, warns us of the great danger of a Kaffir uprising in every European colony in Africa. A general rebellion of blacks against the whites is, he declares, only a matter of time; that it has six journals in its propaganda; that this very thing is bringing the white people in Africa together from all the European nations represented there, and that there is strong talk among the whites of establishing a republic in South Africa similar to the United States of America. It is of interest to note that the largest steamer ever launched, the Mauritania, was recently committed to the ocean at Liverpool. The launching weight was 17,000 tons, 800 feet long, eighty-two feet beam, having six passenger decks reached by electric elevators, quadruple screws with turbine engines. It is expected that the Mauritania and the Lucitania, its sister ship, will make the trip across the Atlantic in less than four and one-half days. Since the trouble between France and the Vatican a large number of religious orders and congregations have invaded Italy. Cesare Lombrozo, the eminent Italian scientist, advocates the necessity of special legislation on the part of the government to control all such institutions. He feels that for the government's own safety it must not allow such an overwhelming number of church societies to settle there. The Chicago stock yards seem to have some apt pupils. One of the latest is a plant discovered in San Bernardino, California, in which colored men are making lard out of dogs' flesh. The dogs were mostly purchased in Los Angeles. The manager was formerly a bootblack in San Bernardino, and he stated that a market had been found in Los Angeles, and that the project was backed by Los Angeles people. It is not specific command or injunctions which guides the Christian, but the eternal principle of righteousness in the soul. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy" is a specific, divine command, but none can ever do it unless the principles of God's righteousness are in the soul. Is your heart hard?—Pray God to soften it. Bow before Him, tell Him all about it; let the divine Spirit in, and in His name claim the gentleness of Christ which makes great. "Make peace" with God if you are at enmity; "walk at peace" with Him amid the world's strife; finally enjoy with Him forever "the abundance of peace."