Heralds of the Morning and The Coming King
REVEALING THE MEANING OF THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROBLEMS OF THE PRESENT TIMES, AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GREAT PHENOMENA IN NATURE. Treating upon the marvelous record of the nineteenth century—the wonderful advance in the sciences and art—the development of natural resources—the prevalence of crime—the perfection of death-dealing instruments of war—the suppressed anger of nations—the disturbed condition of the elements, and citing scriptures that declare these to be signs of the coming King. is to set forth the prophetic signs with their present partial fulfilment in the appalling loss of life by murder, suicide, political and social troubles, dissatisfaction between employer and employed, strikes and fires, wars and rumors of wars, as evidence that there is a social vortex into which all unsettled factions, and the world at large will soon be plunged as another great sign of the end of earthly kingdoms and the setting up of the everlasting kingdom. “Heralds of the Morning” has just been revised, and greatly improved in contents, illustrations, and new attractive cover design. Bound in durable cloth, with marble edges. Price $1.50. Regular discount to agents. TREATING UPON THE CONNECTION OF CHRIST WITH THE EARTH FROM CREATION TO ITS FINAL RESTORATION AND THE REDEMPTION OF MAN. It presents in a clear, concise, and interesting manner the live issues of our times, revealing how history is accurately fulfilling the great prophecy of Christ as recorded in Matthew 24. The money question, the iniquity abounding in political, social, and religious life, the great war preparations of all nations, and other kindred topics are discussed in separate chapters, showing they are but the responsive history to the unerring voice of the prophecy of Christ and his apostles. These events are all shown to point to the great culminating event of this earth’s history—the coming of the King, and the restoration of this earth as the final abode of those who are faithful in their allegiance to him. “The Coming King” has been thoroughly revised, and brought up to date. It has also been reillustrated, and new matter added. There has been quite an improvement made in the cover design, but the prices will remain the same as before; namely, plain binding, $1; gilt, $1.50. Regular discount to agents. REVIEW AND HERALD PUBLISHING ASSN., 222 North Capitol Street, Washington, D. C. PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING CO., SOUTHERN PUBLISHING ASSN., A Spiritual Refreshing
By Editor
WE sincerely hope that the coming season of prayer will be a time of great spiritual refreshing among all our people. We need such an experience for our own sake, and for the sake of the work in which we are engaged. “Ask ye of Jehovah rain in the time of the latter rain, even of Jehovah that maketh lightnings; and he will give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field.” Let us prove this promise. AN appreciation of God’s gifts to us prompts us to give liberally and cheerfully for the extension of his kingdom in the earth. Such giving is acceptable to God. Whether the gift be large or small when measured by the world’s standard of value, it will be a liberal gift when measured by the circumstances of the giver. And love for God and gratitude for his unspeakable gift will make such giving a pleasure, even though it involves a sacrifice. It is the cheerful giver who finds out in his experience that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” SHALL we continue to extend our missionary operations into new fields? Shall we enlarge our work in fields not yet worked? Shall we increase the number of missionaries who shall carry this message to the ends of the earth? Shall we plan to finish the work in this generation? A practical answer to these questions will be found in the size of the annual offering. Such an offering as we are able to make, and such as we ought to make, will provide the means needed both to continue present efforts and to enter upon new enterprises. A small offering will cramp present efforts and prohibit new enterprises. Let each one look the situation squarely in the face, and then give such an answer through his annual offering as he thinks the Master will approve. THESE are the last days. The crisis toward which this world has been tending for six thousand years is just upon us. Fires, floods, tornadoes, and disasters of every kind are simply the forerunners of that greatest of all catastrophes which will involve the whole world. The day of probation is drawing to a close and in a short time the offer of mercy and forgiveness will be heard no more. It is no time now to copy those who have lost their bearings and do not understand the times, or to seek for a new message which we think may be more acceptable to the people. The hour has come to declare God’s message to this generation just as he has given it to us, and to do this in the plainest and most direct manner. We must say on the authority of God’s Word, that Jesus is soon coming, and we must present in clear lines the one and only gospel message of warning and deliverance which will prepare a people to stand in that day. Great is our opportunity, and great is our responsibility. “As a people who believe in Christ’s soon appearing, we have a message to bear,—‘Prepare to meet thy God.’ Our message must be as direct as was the message of John. He rebuked kings for their iniquity. Notwithstanding that his life was imperiled, he did not hesitate to declare God’s word. And our work in this age must be done as faithfully. In order to give such a message as John gave, we must have a spiritual experience like his. The same work must be wrought in us. We must behold God, and in beholding him lose sight of self.” Success will surely attend the labors of those who first feed upon their own message, and make it a part of their experience, and then go forth with humble confidence in God to be simply his mouthpiece for speaking his own word of warning and salvation to a people who face the judgment unprepared. Understand the message fully. Be the message really. Speak the message plainly. “As It Was in the Days of Noah”
In McClure’s Magazine for December, S. S. McClure writes of “The Increase of Lawlessness in the United States.” Instead of merely theorizing or moralizing upon the subject, he presents “comments on the prevalence of crime and lawlessness in the United States, taken almost at random from representative and serious newspapers, and from the published statements of judges and citizens.” He also prints “the statistics of murders and homicides in the United States which have been collected for twenty-three years by the Chicago Tribune. These statistics confirm the general impression regarding the rapid and alarming increase of lawlessness in our country.” We take the following paragraphs from some of the comments quoted:— Lawlessness pervades the land, unrest and discontent breed over apparent prosperity. We have become the money center of the world, but this has bred a feverish appetite for gold, with all its vulgar accompaniments. In an address on “Suggestion and Crime,” delivered before the members of the Patria Club in the Hotel Savoy last evening, President Henry Hopkins, of Williams College, declared that the prevalence of crime in this country was greater at the present time than ever before, and that the foundations of the national life are threatened. It is less than two decades since James Bryce wrote his “American Commonwealth.” He was then able to give the highest praise to the law-abiding spirit of the American people. Should he rewrite his chapter as a result of his visit to this country this fall, he would have a different story to tell. The violence and the indifference to violence shown by our great cities, Chicago included, are symptomatic of a great and rapid change that is passing over the country. Last week there was a shameful negro-burning in Georgia. There have recently been labor riots in New York City. We all know of the war on law and order in Colorado. . . . And we have just had a touch of anarchy in the army. The Failure to Enforce Law
What does it all mean? Are our people losing, not merely their respect for law, but their very sense of what law means? With the city [Chicago] so held in the grasp of criminals that for neither life nor property is there security, the people are becoming aroused to one of the most serious problems that can confront a municipality. Acting Mayor McGann declared that matters had come to such a pass that “to-day crime and the criminal form the greatest question before the people of the nation.” In South Carolina, as we have noted, the safest crime is the crime of taking human life. The conditions are the same in almost every Southern State. Murder and violence are the distinguishing marks of our present-day civilization. We do not enforce the law. We say by statute that murder must be punished by death, and murder is rarely punished by death, or rarely punished in any other way in this State, and in any of the Southern States, except where the murderer is colored, or is poor and without influence. Now, this state of affairs can not last forever. We have grown so accustomed to the failure of justice where human life is taken by violence that we excuse one failure, and another, until it will become a habit, and the strong shall prevail over the weak, and the man who slays his brother shall be regarded as the incarnation of power. The fact that two hundred and twenty-two homicides were committed in South Carolina during the year 1903 has been published. Captain Charles Petty, of Spartanburg, S. C., was asked the other day what in his opinion were the causes leading to such a record. He replied: “Our own citizens were less shocked by the bloody record than those of other States; for we had by degrees got accustomed to homicide. It did not appear to be a phenomenal record, even to our law-abiding, conservative citizens. They understood how it was brought about. It would be well for people outside of the State to learn that this record is only the logical result of many years’ infraction of law.” In Chicago during the past year there were one hundred and eighteen homicides, besides a large number of deadly assaults, in which the victims recovered or partially recovered. In Paris, according to statistics, just completed by the police in that city, only fifteen murders or attempted murders occurred in the same period. In London, three or four times the size of Chicago in population, there were twenty murders. These figures illustrate the situation in Chicago. More than eight times as many murders in Chicago as in Paris! Six times as many as in London! Mr. McClure then brings forward his statistics covering the period from 1881 to 1903 inclusive, showing, among other items, the population of the United States for each year and the number of murders and homicides in the United States for each year. In 1881, with a population of 51,316,000, there were 1,266 murders and homicides. In 1902, with a population of 79,117,000, there were 8,834 murders and homicides. The terrible conclusion from these figures is that “at present there are four and a half times as many murders and homicides for each million of people in the United States as there were in 1881.” To meet the claim that this enormous increase of crime is due to the foreigners who come to this country in such large numbers, Mr. McClure states that, with the exception of Russia, these immigrants “came from countries no one of which has half as many murders and homicides per million of population as we do.” His conclusion is that “the records of murders and homicides in the various countries seem to show that foreigners in the United States acquire most of their disrespect for law after they come among us.” In looking for “the causes of this appalling increase of crime,” Mr. McClure presents the following view of the situation:— We have described, time and again, the oligarchy which consists of these three classes:—- Saloon-keepers, gamblers, and others who engage in businesses that degrade.
- Contractors, capitalists, bankers, and others who can make money by getting franchises and other property of the community cheaper by bribery than by paying the community.
- Politicians who are willing to seek and accept office with the aid and indorsement of the classes already mentioned.
These three classes combine, and get control of the party machine. They nominate and elect men who will agree to help them rob the city or State for the benefit of themselves, and who will agree also not to enforce the laws in regard to the various businesses that degrade a community. We find under various modifications this criminal oligarchy in control of many communities in the United States. We find representatives of this combination in the United States Senate, among governors of States, State legislators, mayors, aldermen, police officials. We find them among men in business life—captains of industry, bankers, street-railway magnates. In short, wherever franchises or contracts of any kind are to be secured from a community, we find leading citizens in the ring to rob their own neighbors, managers of corporations bribing lawmakers, lawyers for pay helping their clients to bribe safely, jurors refusing to render just verdicts. These men,—bribers of voters, voters who are bribed, bribers of aldermen and legislators, and aldermen and legislators who are bribed,—men who secure control of lawmaking bodies, and have laws passed which enable them to steal from their neighbors,—men who have laws non-enforced and break laws regulating saloons, gambling houses, and, in short, all men who pervert and befoul the source of law,—these men we have called Enemies of the Republic. They are worse—they are enemies of the human race. They are destroyers of a people. They are murderers of a civilization. They constitute a class of criminals very different from ordinary criminals who break laws; these men destroy law. Foreseeing that there will be some, perhaps many, who will not like to look upon such a forbidding picture of present-day conditions, Mr. McClure anticipates their attitude toward his presentation of the facts by saying: “It is easy to generalize, and to turn your back and say, ‘I am an optimist,’ or ‘After all, this is the best country in the world.’ But a man is not necessarily an optimist who, if his house is on fire, refuses to look, and says, ‘I am an optimist; I don’t believe it’s on fire after all.’” We have given considerable space to these extracts, and we believe that the importance of the subject justifies our doing so. When Seventh-day Adventists assert that violence and crime are on the increase, they are contradicted point blank, or it is claimed that the apparent increase is due to the increase of the population, or to more complete and accurate statistics. But here is a consensus of opinion as indicated by the utterances of representative men and newspapers, backed up by carefully collected statistics covering a period of over twenty years, showing that there is undeniably an actual and alarming increase of crime and violence in this country which is all out of proportion to the increase of population, and a well-grounded claim that this state of affairs is due to an organized campaign for corrupting the very sources of law and for debauching the public conscience. The writer of this article does not claim to be setting forth the fulfilment of prophecy concerning the last days, but he is certainly making a valuable contribution to the interpretation of the prophetic description of the condition of things just before the coming of the Lord. “As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” And of the times of Noah it is said: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” The diagnosis of the causes of this increase of violence, as stated in the article from which we have quoted, emphasizes the hopelessness of the situation so far as the ordinary agencies of reform are concerned. Many whose sworn duty it is to uphold law and to enforce obedience to it are in collusion with the professional lawbreakers, “and justice is turned away backward, and righteousness standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and uprightness can not enter.” When we also remember that since the obligation to observe the Sabbath of the fourth commandment has been urged upon the people of this generation, many ministers of the gospel have declared that God’s law has been abolished, we can appreciate more fully how deep-seated is this tendency toward lawlessness. There is5no remedy for the situation as a whole. For individuals there is deliverance through the third angel’s message and the coming of the Lord. Sabbath-Keeping and Sunday Rest
By L. A. S.
In a report of the annual meeting of the Ontario Lord's Day Alliance which appears in a Brantford, Ontario, paper we note this paragraph stating the attitude of the Alliance toward observers of the seventh day:— Rev. J. S. Stuart, of London, said that the Seventh-day Adventists had been resting on Saturday and working on Sunday. They had been notified that all illegal employment must be discontinued on the sabbath, though they might rest on Saturday too if they wished. There is an intimation in the last sentence that the authority which forbids work on Sunday reserves the right to forbid rest on Saturday should such action be deemed necessary in the interests of the first-day sabbath. At present the Lord's Day Alliance is willing to allow observers of the seventh day to rest on that day, if they rest on Sunday as well. They can observe the day which they believe to be the Sabbath of the Lord, on condition that they show the same honor to another day which has become a rival institution. This, however, is what Jehovah has forbidden. He is a jealous God, and will tolerate no rival. No man can serve Jehovah and any other god at the same time. The Creator must have the entire allegiance of his creature, or none; and to serve any other master is to fail to honor Jehovah. And this is reasonable, since Jehovah by virtue of being man's Creator has every claim upon all the capabilities with which man has been endowed. He has the right of sole proprietorship in all his creatures. The power that is behind the Sunday sabbath, and against the seventh-day Sabbath, is satisfied if men will merely fail to honor the seventh day as God has commanded. He who tries to serve God and Mammon really serves Mammon wholly, and God not at all. God demands entire allegiance and obedience on man's part, and can not accept anything less. The power that is behind Sunday is willing that a man should rest on the seventh day as well as on the first; but God, who ordained the seventh day as the Sabbath, can not allow the observance of any other weekly day of rest. He has set apart the seventh day from all other days of the week, making that the rest day, while other days are working days. This distinction he commands man to preserve, and to observe any other weekly rest day is to dishonor the Sabbath day and its Creator. It is not a long step, however, from the prohibition of work on Sunday, to the prohibition of rest on the Sabbath. The seventh-day keeper has only to be arrested for non-observance of Sunday, and put into prison or the chain-gang, to find himself in circumstances where his conscientious desire to rest on Saturday will be contemptuously disregarded. The Sunday law first makes him a “criminal,” and then, because he is such, refuses him the right which previously it made a show of granting him. The whole history of Sunday and of Sunday legislation shows that there can be no compromise between that institution and the seventh-day Sabbath. As there can be but one God, so there can be but one Sabbath and one weekly rest day in the belief and practise of God's people. The Argument From Prosperity
The claim that prosperity is a sure evidence of divine favor, and that adversity is a sure proof of the divine displeasure, is as old as the time of Job. The three friends, “miserable comforters,” of that afflicted man argued that his loss of property and sons and daughters was positive proof that he had departed from the ways of righteousness, and had forfeited the favor of God. And so Eliphaz said: “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the upright cut off? According as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow trouble, reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger are they consumed.” Job took the opposite view, and declared: “The tents of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.” The book of Job was written with special reference to this argument from prosperity, and to give such light upon this subject that the Jews need not reject the Messiah when he should come, on the ground that his poverty and his life of toil and sorrow were sufficient proof that he could not be Isaiah’s Emmanuel, “God with us.” We have no desire to shake the confidence of any one in the fact that God does often bless his children with temporal prosperity, but it is also true that wicked men acquire large wealth. The psalmist testifies: “I was envious at the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” And again he says: “Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.” So Jeremiah, the prophet, inquires, “Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they at ease that deal very treacherously?” It is clear that in order to render a true verdict in any particular case some other factors must be taken into account besides the mere fact of financial prosperity. If any one is inclined to argue that the success of one business enterprise and the failure of competitors is a proof of right principles at the foundation and of divinely approved methods of administration, let him consider the facts concerning the greatest commercial combination in the world to-day: “The Standard Oil Company of to-day is a New Jersey corporation, which controls ninety per cent of the Eastern oil production. It makes twenty-one and one-half million barrels out of the twenty-four million barrels of petroleum products made in this country. Its receipts are enormous. For five years its annual dividends have averaged about forty-five million dollars, or nearly fifty per cent on its capitalization—a sum which, capitalized at five per cent, would be nine hundred million dollars.” And yet the same writer who calls attention to these facts characterizes the record of the doings of the Standard Oil Company as “perhaps the blackest page in the history of American commerce,” and declares that “there are too many features of its career which tend so to stir the blood as to make the impartial temper of the historian hard to maintain.” The wrecks of competitors strew the whole path of the Oil Trust, while it has been amassing almost untold wealth; but who would like to urge this as an evidence of divine approval of its policy and methods? To do so would be to overthrow all received standards of righteousness in conduct. The argument from prosperity will not stand against the fact of disobedience to divine instruction and a disregard of divine principles. We can not prove God’s way wrong and our own way right by pointing to temporal prosperity. In the end God’s way will be vindicated as the only way of real prosperity. Our King and Our Commission
By W. A. S.
Just at this year-end we have had, as never before, a demonstration of the truth of the quotation from “Testimony,” Vol. VIII, which appears on the annual-offering envelopes:— “From every country is heard the cry, “Come over and help us!” Rich and poor, high and low, are calling for light. The situation itself is an appeal that can never be put into words. The old king of France led his men-at-arms into battle, saying simply, “Gentlemen, I am your king; and,” pointing toward the front, “there is the enemy.” It was all he needed to say. To-day, while the finger of God’s providence points the way, and the cry from all the world rings in our ears, the Lord Jesus says to us, “I am your King; there, before you, is the work to be done.” Let us do it. Noteworthy Catholic Admissions
By L. A. S.
Has Rome changed? Is the old intolerant Rome of history a thing of the past, and is the Rome of to-day actuated and guided by the liberal spirit of the present age, as most Protestants now seem to believe? The best answer to this question is that which Rome herself gives, since Rome admits, and even boasts, that she has not changed in character during the centuries of her history, but maintains the same principles and claims to-day as of old. Degenerate Protestantism is the source of the idea that Rome has changed, that the Rome which multiplies churches and schools and makes fair speeches in the American republic is not the intolerant Rome which established the Inquisition and sent to torture and death such as dared stand for freedom of conscience in the days of her supremacy. Rome herself, by the testimony of her own spokesmen, frankly declares her enmity toward freedom of conscience and of speech in this twentieth century, the same as in the twelfth, and maintains her old-time claim to be the rightful civil as well as spiritual ruler of the world. Here is the testimony of two such spokesmen on this subject called forth by the present controversy between state and church in France. One of these, Anatole France, a well-known member of the French Academy, says in a Vienna journal, the Neue Freie Presse:— The Roman Church is at once a temporal and a spiritual power. She rests her right to rule the world upon the canonical evangelists, upon the tradition of the primitive church, upon the concession of Constantine, upon the sacred canonical books and the sacred decretals. Whether the Roman Church now possesses a territorial domain or simply dwells in a palace, she is a state. She is a temporal power distinguished from the powers with which she negotiates in that the latter have set boundaries to their sovereignty, whereas the church can recognize no boundaries to her sovereignty without repudiating her origin, changing her nature, without betraying herself and contradicting herself. . . . The very nature of this institution, as the church expounds it to us, invests her with civil and political authority over the whole world. Because she is a spiritual power, she is a temporal power. Because souls should be subject to her, she undertakes to subject bodies to herself. And, in fact, it is difficult to imagine a domination of the spirit without a domination of the flesh. . . . The church makes it her mission to save the world, and to this end she has prescribed certain formulas and customs, has set forth rules of life for the union of the sexes, for food, days of rest, feasts, and education of children, the right to write, speak, and think. To make sure of the carrying out of these rules—which, so far from affecting the purely spiritual domain only, come to a great extent within the police power of the state—the church must exercise a right of control over the government of all nations, and hence must assume a place in the government of all peoples. According to the papal claims, Rome may make treaties with any other power, but is not bound to observe them, since no other power has any right to negotiate with Rome, but only to obey her. On this point this Catholic authority says:— What relationship is possible between Catholic Rome and the modern state? Rome is the good, and the states are the evil. Rome is life and truth; the states are lies and death. How can truth negotiate with falsehoods? how can life conclude pacts with death, a Rome negotiate with the French republic? Here, indeed, we must differentiate. Here we must have the guidance of canon law to estimate the earthly power according to that which it does, and that which it is. If we judge the worldly power by its deeds, it may be found abominable and worthy of condemnation. But if we regard it as a thing in and for itself, it is divine. And Pope Leo XIII admitted in his encyclical of 1892 that the government of M. Carnot was a divine arrangement. Bad princes as well as good ones are invested with divine rights, and Rome can at her pleasure negotiate with the one as with the other. . . . As the church embraces the whole world, she can have, properly speaking, no foreign affairs. Negotiations with the nations are really district affairs. The church certainly negotiates in all good-will with existing powers. She gently endures the severest ordeals. She endures humiliations with humility. She yields to power. She will always have the right to recall concessions wrung from her weakness. She can always say that she, coerced or overpowered, has yielded. Every power that negotiates with her overpowers her and coerces her from the simple fact that it negotiates instead of obeying, that it contends with the robbed queen instead of kissing the dust from her feet. She will always have the right to say that she was not free. She is not free as long as she does not command. The Literary Digest, for whose columns this testimony was translated from the French, quotes also from the official organ of the Vatican, the Osservatore Romano, regarding the papal view of the relations which should subsist between church and state. This official spokesman of the Vatican says:— Separation of the two perfect societies, constituted such by God, is a monstrosity, and to this monstrosity the church can not adjust herself in Catholic states, and has to combat it. But has not the Catholic Church become a liberal church? On this point the Vatican organ says:— Freedom of the press is an error condemnable and condemned. It is contrary to sense in philosophy, and in theology a monstrosity, in the same manner as freedom of worship and of conscience and of thought. But while the Catholic Church condemns freedom of conscience, of speech, and of thought, she tolerates it, as a matter of policy. The “maxim of toleration of freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience on the part of the church,” is “acceptable,” says this authority; but “toleration is one thing, approval is another.” Following this statement, the Osservatore Romano defines just what is meant by Catholics when they say that their church favors freedom of speech and of the press. Very often is this assertion heard in the speeches of Catholic orators in this country, and read in the Catholic press. This is what they mean, if Rome’s highest official organ speaks the truth:— Certainly, if you say simply: “Is freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience admitted philosophically and theologically?” you will not find any Catholic who is at all cultivated who will reply to you, or who can reply to you, affirmatively. But if, instead, you put the question: “By hypothesis, is it possible to admit toleration of freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience?” you will not find any cultivated Catholic who can reply to you, or who will reply to you, negatively. Such is the character of Rome to-day, by her own showing, and she seems not averse to a bold statement of the truth. A Fulfilled Prophecy
By L. A. S.
“In the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves,” “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Testimony that we are in the time when this language of the apostle Paul to Timothy is being fulfilled, is coming from many sources. An exchange quotes the Rev. Russell H. Conwell, the well-known clergyman and lecturer, as having recently said:— The Christian church is being submerged because of laxity. Pastors are growing indifferent, and congregations are all the time becoming smaller. There are too many movements, too many office holders and differing phases of creed. The result is the parent church is dying. The only reason that a young man goes to church nowadays is because he knows that his best girl is there. The same paper quotes this further and stronger testimony on the same point from the Christian Witness:— Every earnest soul, seeking his own salvation and that of others, finds himself brought face to face with an awful wall of indifference that is widespread and alarming. We know that there are eminent authorities who are seeking to make us believe that everything is progressing gloriously. But the people who are really burdened for the salvation of souls are staggered at an alarming indifference, which they find in the way of the salvation of men. They are puzzled to know how it can be said that things are hopeful when few of the young men of the day are found in the house of God, and thousands7every Sunday in the ball field and Sunday theater; when this Christian land contains three hundred thousand fallen women, and there are annually thirty thousand cases of divorce; when family worship is on the decline, and the theater is largely supported by the church; when intemperance runs riot, and revivals of religion are on the decline in number. It is customary to dismiss these facts by saying, “Pessimism,” and declaring we must be optimistic and look on the bright side. There has been so much of this kind of “optimism” that black is being called white. In the face of such conditions, what message is there that expresses the world's hope like that which proclaims, “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh”? “Joy to the world, the Lord will come.” This is the message which every true optimist should now be giving. L. A. S. Three Stirring Appeals
By Arthur G. Daniells
One of the most encouraging and cheering omens of the cause, which the Seventh-day Adventists are carrying forward, is the earnest appeals constantly coming to them from distant lands for missionaries. This is what the prophet Isaiah said would be our experience. Here are his words: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come. . . . Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall rise [shine] upon thee. . . . And the Gentiles shall come to thy light. . . . Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee.” Isa. 60: 1-4. These words are surely being fulfilled to-day. From different lands enveloped in gross darkness the people are coming to the light. And as they become enlightened, they gather together, and literally come to us. They look to us for instruction and leadership. They appeal to us for experienced missionaries who can help them give the light to their fellow men. These appeals bring fresh and increased obligations to us. They are not simply mute appeals rising from appalling conditions. They are actual, definite calls from living souls—from our brethren and sisters in the third angel's message, who are living in the dark heathen lands. In Korea there are four new churches of about two hundred members. These new believers are like tender lambs in the midst of wolves. They need a wise-hearted, loving shepherd to care for them, guarding them from the perils surrounding them, and leading them on to glorious victories. The work now going on in Korea is remarkable; it is a clear proof that the latter rain is falling there. The appeal of these dear souls for at least one teacher of experience should receive a prompt and hearty response from us. Then there is that remarkable work the Lord has wrought in that theological seminary at Amoy, China. Whose heart has not been stirred by the reports we have received from Elder J. N. Anderson regarding this experience? By leading Brother Kei to embrace the truth, the Lord has added to his cause an educated Christian Chinaman, who is master of a difficult dialect spoken by many millions in that dark land. Brother Kei has already written a tract of seven thousand words on the Sabbath question. Some of his friends stand ready to furnish means for printing it as soon as it has been approved by our missionaries in China. Brother Anderson says: “Will you please search out a faithful man of experience to take charge of the work, and give mold to the labors of those whom the Lord is leading out?” Can we think of doing less than this? In Rangoon, Burma, there is a little company of Sabbath-keepers rejoicing in the third angel's message. They understand that this message must be given to the millions of Burma. It is new and strange to them, and they feel that they need at least one man of experience to lead and guide the work in that country. They earnestly plead for this, and while waiting, they are working. They are translating and producing a little literature to give to the people. Here is something very definite and pressing for which every believer in this message should pray during the week of prayer, and until the calls are answered. We should pray the Lord to send conviction to the hearts of those who should go to these three countries. We should pray that they may be willing to go, and that all obstacles to going shall be moved out of the way. We should pray the Lord to move upon the hearts of those who have means that can be spared to send these laborers and support them, to feel it their duty to give liberally to this end. And we should pray for willing hearts to be convicted of our personal duty to go or give. In fact, this is the real purpose of prayer. We can not instruct the Lord about the situation. We do not need to suggest that he should pity those dear souls. But our prayers for them will result in bringing some of us into clearer light regarding our duty. They will fill us with pity, compassion, and love. They will open the doors of our vaults, and bring out our treasure for the needs of those fields. Then let there be earnest, continued, importunate prayer that these three stirring appeals to this people shall be quickly answered. An annual offering of eighty thousand dollars will make it possible to send laborers to those fields early in 1905. Greeting From Australia
By George A. Irwin
Australia accepts with pleasure the invitation to bear her testimony in the world's social meeting, and we are glad to say we have no discouraging report to bring. Our work is onward all along the line. Our laborers are contented and happy in their work of pushing the triumphs of the cross in new fields. A spirit of union and harmony prevails, not only among the workers in the field, but between our institutions. That spirit of loyalty to the fundamental principles of the third angel's message, and the system of order and organization that has held us together in the past, and made us what we are as a denomination, is particularly noticeable and gratifying. Our institutions are all working in perfect accord, each in its sphere doing its utmost to advance the work in even lines. Our people respond freely to the extent of their ability to the appeal for means to advance the work, and best of all, a spirit of work is taking possession of the laity more and more as the signs multiply around us. We would say to our brethren in other lands, Be of good courage, nail the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus to your mast, and stand by until the end. Depart not from them to the right hand or to the left; for by so doing thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success.