Adventism by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 27, 1907

Adventism

By Editor

Adventism.—A friend sends us the Gospel Trumpet of January 3, containing an article on "Adventism," and requests us to answer it, but as we read the article the question comes, Of what use? It is a conglomerate mixture of truth and error and half truth, which is the worst kind of error. Uriah Smith is quoted as authority concerning the condition of things in 1844, and his testimony utterly perverted. Where he speaks of only a branch of the Advent movement, it is quoted as tho it applied to the whole movement. Nor did William Miller, as the writer states, acknowledge that the whole thing was a mistake, nor has the "seventh-day faction" been from time to time torn to pieces by discord, divisions, and confusion. It has always been true, in the very days of the apostles and of Christ Himself, that some disciples go back and "walk no more" with the body. No movements have been started in connection with God's work but what that has been true, and that is all that has been true in connection with the Seventh-day Adventists. There have been those who have withdrawn themselves, and who have fought the movement and its work; but the harder they have fought, the stronger the movement has developed, and greater success and blessing have ever attended the movement after they left. As stated by one of old, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us." The animus of the whole article is shown in the writer's enmity to the Sabbath. That Sabbath is a part of God's holy law, and was kept by Christ Himself and His apostles. The only reason the Bible gives that men do not love it, is that the "carnal mind is enmity against God."

A Cure of Opium.—In parts of Malaysia a plant has been discovered which relieves the terrible pains which invariably accompany an attempt to leave off using opium. It is called chong hing. The leaves are simply boiled and the resulting tea is taken as a medicine. Many have tried it with complete success, and the Christian missionaries and many Chinese are making the medicine in large quantities for free distribution among the sufferers, who throng by the hundreds to the places where it is made. The government sales of opium fell off $30,000 in the month of November, 1906, as a result of the use of the new plant. Another result is that the natives are coming to look upon the missionaries with much more favor, as they are mainly instrumental in supplying the medicine.

Thomas A. Edison announces that he has perfected a storage battery which is half the weight and has twice the power of the common battery. One charging of the battery will carry an automobile one hundred miles, and the matter of running such a machine will be much simplified. The inventor has spent seven years perfecting the new battery.

A Princely Gift.—John D. Rockefeller's latest gift to the cause of education is in the shape of income-bearing securities valued at about $32,000,000. None of this will go to State institutions, but certain colleges will be selected for donations and endowments, forming a chain across the continent, those making the best use of the help to be favored.

"To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." With regard to the matter contained in this paper, we always desire the reader to search the Scriptures, as did the Bereans, to see whether those things are so.