p. 316 | Our Weeklies by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 23, 1879

Our Weeklies.

By Editor

Not long since we remarked that there is no rivalry between the SIGNS OF THE TIMES and the Advent Review. We say further, there is not even a feeling of indifference between them. They are engaged in the same work, and supported by the same people. No separate interest is found in either establishment. They mutually rejoice in each other's welfare.

We dared not even hope during the present volume, to meet the expectations of the patrons of this paper. We have not, by any means, reached to our idea of what it should be, nor can we expect to while our duties are so many and so varied, and while so little aid is received from others, every one connected with the Office being so heavily taxed with cares and labors. Those who have charge of the various branches of the work here, are striving to the utmost of their powers to make it successful. In the midst of financial pressure which has sometimes been felt very severely. The outlay has been necessarily large, and the past year has been one of the greatest stringency in money matters that California has ever experienced. Yet the blessing of the Lord has been with us, and we cannot complain of the patronage we have received.

The tract societies promised, last Fall, that if the SIGNS were put down to a low rate to clubs, they would raise the list to 10,000. This number has not been reached, but we have reason to be truly thankful for what has been done. During the last quarter of the last volume the list was increased about 200. We started in the present volume with an increase of over 800. Our increase at present, for this volume, is about 1,200. The advance system has been rigidly carried out; every name has been erased at the expiration of the time for which payment was made.

But we commenced this article to speak more particularly of the Review. Some time since we read in that paper some remarks made by a minister, in which he expressed the grief he felt in finding so many families of Sabbath-keepers without the Review, and some without even any of our periodicals. More recently we were informed by the editor of the Review that the increase of subscribers does not nearly correspond to the increase of believers as reported by the ministers. Some allowance may be made for this. Sometimes several converts are reported in the same family. And the increased number of our periodicals has, no doubt, some bearing on the case. Some take one paper, and some another, and they let that suffice.

There are some, even in our churches, who avail themselves of the club rates of the SIGNS, and thus get a paper cheaper than the Review. This ought not to be. The club system was not adopted for such purpose; it is solely for missionary work. We hope the number is not large, but we are convinced there are some such cases. And we expect it will be so. Some will always take the cheapest paper, and deprive themselves and their families of the benefits of the weekly visits of our church paper, to save a dollar, or the fraction of a dollar, for the year.

But the fact that there are families among our people who do not take any of our papers is one not pleasant to contemplate. We "call to mind the former days." We look back twenty years or more, when not a family of Adventist Sabbath-keepers in the United States was without the Review. Then if any one professed the Sabbath and did not subscribe for that paper we did not consider him more than half converted to the present truth. We did not count upon him as a reliable member until this point was reached.

We recommend to our ministers to again make this a specialty, wherever they introduce the truth; to make it an object, and work toward it, to have the paper taken into every household where a profession of faith in the third angel's message is made. We are confident that the churches will grow into the spirit of the message, and come to the unity of the faith, much more readily where this is accomplished.