Now Is the Time to Renew.
By Editor
MANY subscriptions close with our Special Bible-Reading Series. We have been glad to have these readers with us during the last six months. We desire to lose none of them. We are glad to receive already so many renewals. Now there are better, stronger reasons for them to stay with us than there were that they should join us. The SIGNS OF THE TIMES will be a better paper next year than ever before. While so much space will not be given to Bible-readings, we shall still give a short, pointed, concise Bible-reading in each issue. In addition to that the paper will publish the entire great, glad, vital, Gospel message in the year to come. It will publish the great ominous signs of warning which God is giving to a world rushing on in mad, thoughtless selfishness. It will note all the great world movements of significance. It will keep before its readers the great mission fields of the world. It will tell by word and illustration the saving, helping truth of God. By that Book of God it will stand without fear or favor. Therefore we invite those whose subscriptions are expiring to stay with us. In the words of Moses to Hobab of old, "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel"—all those who will search and do His word. Life Force.—Prof. E. L. Larkin declares in a recent number of the Examiner that the idea that there is a "real vital force seems to be rapidly vanishing. Few scientific men believe in a vital or life force. Life, now, is almost unanimously held to be an electro-chemical process." And then the professor cites in proof of this Buechner's yeast experiment, in which living yeast was mixed with hard, white sand, sterilized, and subjected to enormous pressure, destroying all yeast germs, but squeezing out a thin liquid, in which were no yeast germs nor protoplasm, which science once called "the base of life." Yet this fluid set up fermentation. The conclusion was that this action is purely chemical action, not life action. But must vital force, or life force, always be manifest in germs discernible by science, or be subject to sterilizing processes? Is protoplasm either "the base of life" or necessary to life existence? It seems to us that there are a dozen questions which it might be profitable for scientists to consider before they set aside the hope of the universe—God the Source of all life, and whose life maintains the integrity of the universe. "Prepare war," declares the prophet; and everywhere we hear the war talk in response to the prediction. A recent number of the London Daily Express says: "The reasons urged for the reduction of the navy are ridiculous. To-day the horizon is clear, and Great Britain is friendly with all the world, but who can prophesy what to-morrow will bring forth. The international situation has changed amazingly in five years. It may change even more rapidly, and fleets can not be built or armies prepared after a crisis has risen. It is imperative that the two-power standard [that is, England's navy as large as those of any other two powers combined] should be maintained fully and completely." We noted three accessions to the Roman Catholic Church from the Episcopal Church in our last. The despatches record another in Chicago; the Rev. Charles E. Bowles, rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church, resigned March 24 to enter the Roman Catholic Church. He is a member of the association known as the Companions of the Holy Saviour, composed of about forty Episcopal ministers throughout the United States. Within the past month three other members of the brotherhood have entered the Roman Catholic Church. Just as soon as a government begins to legislate for the protection or promotion of institutions involving classes, that government has entered upon a downward course. It is individual men and women who should be protected in their rights. Institutions, howsoever religious and sacred they may be, may safely be left to care for themselves. It is men—the individual man, whosoever he may be—whose rights should be guarded. The "Evening Telegram," of St. John's, Newfoundland, of March 23, contains a good article on religious liberty by Mr. C. H. Keslake. Mr. Keslake rightly argues that government has no right to interfere with one's religion, be that religion right or wrong, so long as its devotee does not interfere with the equal rights of others. We wish to thank our correspondents who have sent us some very fine illustrated London journals on the assassination and funeral of the King and Crown Prince of Portugal. One comes from Southern California, the other from Colorado.