Earlier text: THE LAW AND THE TESTIMONYChrist's Third Temptation.
By Thirza M. Foster
“Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.” Matt. 4: 8–11. This is a deeply interesting subject. This is the last of a series of three distinct temptations which Jesus endured, and it would seem that this was even more cruel and fierce than either of the others. The first wore a garb of sympathy; the second, that of piety—both had failed. Satan’s fears were greatly excited; he thought that unless he could in some way ensnare the Son of God, and destroy in the bud the work of man’s redemption, he should ultimately lose his dominion in this apostate world. He was determined to leave no plan untried that promised success. He would throw out a bait so alluring and fascinating that he knew it would entrap almost any child of Adam, and why not the Son of Mary? He chose the mountain as a favorable situation from which to present before Jesus a panoramic view of the surrounding kingdoms. No mountain could have been high enough to bring within his sight all the kingdoms of even one hemisphere, but Luke says that he “showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.” From the circumstances, we are led to the conclusion that this presentation was not real. To produce counterfeit appearances we learn is within the power of Satan. We have an instance of it recorded in the Bible in the account of the workings of the devil through the witch of Endor. See 1 Sam. 28: 3–20. It was an enchanting scene which the tempter portrayed before the Son of God. Then when all the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them, were sparkling in his eyes, Satan came forward and said, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” Why give thy life to purchase these possessions? Only bow the knee to me, only pay me homage, and they are thine. Such an offer was calculated to excite in the heart a spirit of pride. Satan had not forgotten the motive which actuated Adam and Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit. He said to Eve, “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” A spirit of pride was awakened in our first parents at the thought of possessing so much wisdom; but Satan was powerless to awaken such a spirit in the heart of the humble Nazarene. The arch deceiver probably meant to conceal himself. It seems he thought Jesus would not know him, and would not suspect that it was Satan who was seeking to rival the great Creator of the universe; but Jesus, calling him by his proper name, assured him that he was not ignorant either of his person or his character. The Son of God, clothed with divine authority, bade the tempter be gone, thereby refusing to comply with his impious proposals, accompanying his refusal with a Scripture reason for so doing. He said, “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” This requirement may be found in Deut. 10: 30, and 1 Sam. 7: 3. It is also fully comprehended in the first commandment of the decalogue, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” To worship and serve the great Jehovah as he has enjoined upon us to do, is to love him supremely and to obey him fully. Other beings may be loved, and ought to be, but God alone is to be loved with all the heart, and with all the strength. Obedience, too, is due to other beings, but only as they derive their authority from God. Man’s requirements when they contravene God’s holy law are not obligatory upon us. “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Acts 5: 29. “Then the devil leaveth him.” Here we have a practical illustration of the command and promise, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Luke says, “He departed from him for a season,” implying that there was now a suspension, but not a termination, of his assaults. As it was with Jesus, so it is with his followers. Satan does not always tempt them alike, but when they resist him he leaves them, and there is a respite, but it is only for a season; soon he returns and repeats his attacks. Hence the force of Paul’s exhortation: “Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” “Behold, angels came and ministered unto him.” Holy angels doubtless stood by during this whole conflict watching its result with the greatest interest, ready to minister unto him as soon as it should end. Yes, angels of light rejoiced over the victory Christ had obtained. They likewise rejoice when we overcome the temptations of the adversary. And do they not visit us, and minister unto us by their sweet influences? Jesus completely conquered Satan by the “sword of the Spirit,” accompanied with faith in God, and obedience to his will, and Luke, in describing his retirement from the field of battle, says, “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee.” The “wicked one” who once sought to seduce our Saviour by the proffer of worldly glory is employing the same lure to deceive and destroy us. As this was his last resort in his attempts to overcome the great Head of the Church, so now he is making a thorough trial of its influence upon the “remnant.” Worldly-mindedness is in a great measure disqualifying us, as a people, for active effort in the cause of God; and sometimes it results in open apostasy from the truth. Let it be remembered that God’s word declares, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” 1 John 2: 15–17. The god of this world offers us for our service the transitory enjoyments of earth. He is a lying spirit, and may disappoint us. The God of Heaven offers us for our service eternal life in his glorious kingdom. He is a God of truth, and will not disappoint us. Jesus, “the faithful and true witness,” counsels us to buy of him gold tried in the fire, that we may be rich, and white raiment, that we may be clothed, and to anoint our eyes with eye salve, that we may see. Let us give heed to his words—be zealous and repent, and when the tempter proffers us the glories of this world for our service, let us, like our Master, bid him depart, resolutely replying, We will worship the Lord our God, and him only will we serve. The Cup of Devils.
By D. T. Taylor
“Wretched compound,” so Accum, the London chemist, in 1820, styled the wines and liquors. “Stuff” was the contemptuous epithet used by Appleton’s Cyclopedia forty years later. “Infernal stuff,” indignantly echoes D. L. Moody. “Alcohol and its vile associations,” are the words of the Boston Journal of Chemistry. Dr. Charles A. Story calls modern liquors “adulterated, poisoned, counterfeited slop.” And Dr. Hiram Cox proved that nine gallons of every ten sold and drank had in its composition “the most pernicious and poisonous drugs.” Could the devil himself invent worse beverages for human beings to drink? Now I have said that tobacco is put into the drinks. Near Chicago for twelve years was an immense brewery. The son of the brewer worked in it. He told Dr. Story that the largest bills his father had to pay were not for malt nor hops, but for tobacco! He put the dirty weed into the beer. Nausea, narcosis, and paralysis, are among its two hundred and fifty pathological effects. A little opium will antidote the nausea, and a little jalap will antidote the constipating effects of the opium. All those go into malt beer. And for fear the beer-guzzlers won’t guzzle down enough, alum is put into this “stuff” to increase the thirst of the drinker. Alum is a dryer. The drinker is always dry. The alum makes him crave more beer, then whisky. Tobacco is found in the red wines and red brandies. It goes into the whisky also. Five hundred northern volunteers were witnesses to the taking of fifteen or twenty pounds of dog-leg tobacco out of the bottom of a whisky barrel at Savannah, Ga., the contents of which had just been drained off into the stomachs both of rebel and Union soldiers. Our boys in blue had got drunk on the dirty fluid, and the sight of that mass of “devil’s weed” was not a little disgusting. Worse. An extensive wine-maker at Philadelphia told Rev. T. P. Hunt, of Wyoming, Pa., that in order to procure the nutty flavor for which “Maderia” was so much admired, he put a bag of cockroaches into the liquor and let them remain there till they were dissolved. He furthermore declared that this was a general custom with his fraternity. Now cockroaches are the special horror of most people. The excrement of this voracious bug has an unbearable odor. How delicious must be that “Maderia” of which its abominable juice forms a part! Cochineal also, a red powder used for dyeing, made of the dried bodies of an ugly, swollen insect, goes into the liquors to give them the right color. Will you have a glass of bug Maderia, O wine bibber? Perhaps you prefer something stronger. Then, import Swedish brandy and quaff the juice of black ants. Thomas McMullen is the author of “A Hand Book of Wines.” It is a text-book and guide with all wine-makers. On page 323 he says, “Swedish Brandy is made of corn whisky and black ants.” One ant in the sirup cup spoils it all for me. Now take ten bushels, crush them, macerate them, squeeze the juice out, and put it into your pipes of brandy. Sweet, isn’t it? “I drink nice foreign brandy,” said a gentleman; “I don’t use any of the spurious stuff.” You drink the kind perhaps that passed through the Custom House at this port the past summer. Splendid “Antwerp” brandy, in case, was invoiced at $2.25 per case, which is eighteen and three-fourth cents a bottle! When it comes back from New York into a retailer’s hands you will pay $1.50 per bottle for it. Liquor men have fertile brains. The Scientific American, adverting to the fact that the poisonous potato-bug is used in some quarters as a substitute for the Spanish Fly, wants to know why this horrid insect can’t be further utilized. I commend the suggestion to the whisky and wine-makers. Gather them up by the ton (locusts and all) and convert them into daily drinks for the people. Old topers will swallow down a barrel full to get at one pint of alcohol, just as a cow drinks a whole barrel of swill to reach one potato in the bottom! Worse and worse. What would you say were I to sell you cider, vinegar, molasses, etc., in barrels soaked in dissolved barn-yard manure? Yet the liquor casks are advised to be thus treated. If you ask, “What for?” you get the answer from the books, “To sweeten them.” “The Wine and Spirit Merchant’s Companion,” by J. Hartley, London, 1835, on page 144, says: “Boil fresh cow manure and soak the casks with it.” A sweet business truly is this liquor traffic. Reader, how many glasses have you emptied into your stomach, drawn from those “sweetened” casks? In boyhood I used to think that the mission of logwood was to dye garments, not human insides. But white wines and fresh-made spirit need to be colored. Logwood will do it. Professor Parkes, in his work on “Hygiene,” says, “Logwood is the great coloring matter for wines.” It is mild astringent and rather harmless, but it would go in if needed were it oil of vitriol. A lady at Rouse’s Point used as a vinegar barrel for several years a cask obtained of a liquor vender. On it was the lying brand “Port Wine.” On knocking in the head she took out a ten quart pan full of logwood chips. They had rattled about within the cask for years. One of our most reliable citizens informs us that he has seen quarts of logwood chips and shavings in barrels once filled with wine, and now piled in the back yard of one of the best hotels in the town of Champlain. In one he saw nearly half a bushel! Our churches, our invalids, and our gentry had drunk it all for nice, pure, “Port.” The red “slops” never saw Oporto, perhaps never saw a grape. I can make of a few drugs just as good wine for less than twenty-five cents a gallon. Mr. Delevan never forgot his last cask of wine. He purchased it for the pure article. Tested by taste, and smell, it was by the best judges in Albany County pronounced pure. Only a few days later he discovered it was made in the secret loft of a wine-seller. Every gallon was doctored whisky and drugs—there was not a drop of grape juice in it. Mr. Delevan never bought another cask of wine. War against the infamous liquor traffic was ever after his life-work. He died at his post. James Duane, of S——, N. Y., bought a cask of Port wine. It had come directly from Oporto. The importer said it was pure. Mr. D., alas, confided in the honesty (?) of a liquor man. He chuckled over his prize. He drew off and bottled the fluid for his choicest friends to quaff with him. He dreamed of the social hour when “The bubbles would swim on the beaker’s brim,
And break on his lips while meeting.”
Alas, for human hopes! In an evil hour he sawed the cask in two. In the bottom were the lees, composed of logwood shavings, alum, and a dirty residuum of other unnameable drugs. Wasn’t he an astonished man? Pure, imported, foreign wine; you never saw it. Only last May the authorities of Paris during a single week threw into the river Seine three hundred barrels of spurious, poisonous wine. The whole world is flooded with such stuff. In T. McMullen’s “Hand Book of Wines,” on page 172, he says, “One wine shipper in a single year shipped from Cette and Marseilles more than 80,000 bottles of Champagne wine,” not the product of grapes, but “wholly fabricated.” There is no end to this work. Now, which do you prefer? Western tobacco beer, or Southern tobacco whisky? Or will you have foreign black-ant brandy, or foreign logwood wine; or United States cockroach wine? or it may be sulphuric acid or strychnine in a brandy cask “soaked in fresh cow manure” would suit you better. “You pays your money and you takes your choice.” But if we should put these abominations and infernal drugs into your chests of tea and coffee, your barrels of flour and fish, and sirup, vinegar, &c., what would you say? what do? How long, O Lord, how long?—D. T. TAYLOR in Plattsburgh (N. Y.) Sentinel. It is enjoined upon Christians that they strengthen themselves in the grace that is in Christ Jesus; but how many there are that neglect this duty, and all their lives travel on their journey like Bunyan’s pilgrims—Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt. They are like a bruised reed and smoking flax—weak, feeble, suffering Christians—babes, and not strong men in Christ Jesus. But such is the wonderful condescension and sympathy of the Lord Jesus Christ that to even such Christians he gives precious promises. He will not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. That is, wherever he finds a spark of grace, he will watch over it with care. Indeed, he knows that it is the weak, feeble Christian that specially needs his help. The father cares more tenderly for the feeble infant than for the strong, robust one. If it cannot walk alone, he extends his hand and gently leads it. So it is with the Saviour—he carries the lambs in his bosom. Paul was in great trouble; he had a thorn in the flesh, which made him feel very weak, and he prayed to God for help, and the answer came, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” And such was his experience of the strengthening grace of the Saviour that he said, “Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me; . . . for when I am weak then am I strong.” While feeble Christians should seek strength, and all should desire to become strong men and women in Christ Jesus, yet there is no room for despondency on the part of the weakest saint. There are many things a weak Christian cannot do. He may not be able, like Greatheart, to kill the Giant Despair, but he can live in the fear of the Lord, and so claim the promise, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” The father pities and helps the weak, suffering child. So our Heavenly Father will pity and help his weak, feeble child, even though it is fitly compared to a bruised reed and smoking flax. Listen to his cheering words: “Fear not, thou worm Jacob.” You are weak and feeble, it is true, “but thou shalt thresh mountains.” My strength shall be perfected in your weakness.—Sel. Unconscious Influence.
By Rev. T. Stark, D. D.
It is said that among the high Alps at certain seasons the traveler is told to proceed very quietly; for on the steep slopes overhead the snow hangs so evenly balanced that the sound of a voice or the report of a gun may destroy the equilibrium and bring down an immense avalanche that will overwhelm everything in ruin in its downward path. And so about our way there may be a soul in the very crisis of its moral history, trembling between life and death, and a mere touch or shadow may determine its destiny. A young lady who was deeply impressed with the truth, and was ready, under a conviction of sin, to ask, “What must I do to be saved?” had all her solemn impressions dissipated by the unseemly jesting of a member of the church by her side as she passed out of the sanctuary. Her irreverent and worldly spirit cast a repellent shadow on that young lady not far from the kingdom of God. How important that we should always and everywhere walk worthy of our high calling as Christians! “So let our lives and lips express
The holy gospel we profess.” Let us remember that we are always casting the shadow of our real life upon some one; that somebody is following us, as John followed Peter into the sepulchre. Happy, if, when all the influences of life flow back and meet us at the Judgment, we can lift up clean hands and spotless robes and say: “I am free from the blood of all men!” Happy then to hear even one soul saying to us out of the great multitude, that following the shadow of our Christian life and devotion, he found Jesus and Heaven.—Rev. T. Stark, D. D. Valuing Our Pursuits on the Death-Bed
IN my pursuits of whatever kind, let this come to mind, “How much shall I value this on my death-bed?” How We Found Things.
By James White
OUR OAKLAND HOME—THE PACIFIC PRINTING HOUSE—FAIRFAX CAMP-MEETING—PRESSES RUNNING—CIRCULATION OF THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES—TENT-MEETING IN SAN FRANCISCO—MEETING-HOUSE. After an absence of five months we reached Oakland in the evening of the 24th ult., and lodged at our good home that night on Eleventh Street, near Castro. The carpenters had but commenced this house when we left last April. The next object that called our attention was our Office building on the same block, commenced some weeks after we left, and brought very nearly to completion more than a month since. When rooms were finished sufficient to receive the new presses and other material sufficient to carry on the business of the Pacific S. D. A. Publishing Association, our builder, Bro. O. B. Jones from Michigan, took his men to San Francisco to build a house of worship in that city for our people. The house is progressing finely, and will be ready for dedication at the close of the tent-meeting being held in that city by Elders Loughborough and Waggoner. When that house shall be finished Bro. O. B. Jones will return and complete the Office building, and furnish it with tables, desks, shelves, drawers, &c. The appearance of this building from the outside is fine. The arrangement inside from the basement to the attic is admirable. The room in the basement is valuable. The several rooms of the two stories of the building are next to perfection in arrangement and conveniences. And there are four valuable finished rooms in the attic. In the rear of the main building, and separated from it the distance of eleven feet, is the brick engine house. And all will cost less than first calculated, and are much better than first expected, owing principally to the ability and faithfulness of Bro. O. B. Jones who took successful charge of our three printing-houses, and our College building, at Battle Creek, Michigan. We left the Signs Office in charge of our sons, J. E. and W. C. White, with advisers and helpers who had a lively interest in the work. They have succeeded beyond our expectations. And to our happy surprise we found the Cottrell and Babcock, First-class, Four Roller, Air Spring, Drum Cylinder Printing Press, and the Universal Job Press in the new building in complete running order, driven by the New York Safety Engine from Babcock and Wilcox. Only six weeks before these were doing good printing on the Pacific Coast they were lying at the freight warehouse across the continent in New York City waiting for shipment. Having run one of the large presses from Cottrell and Babcock, No. 8 Spruce Street, New York, for nearly two years in our Battle Creek Office, we knew just where to go for a second press for our Oakland Office. These gentlemen are evidently taking the lead on printing-presses in our country. The friends of the cause in this State are meeting their pledges as well as could be expected considering the condition of money matters; and it is expected that they will, by New-Years, raise an amount sufficient to pay for the Office building and the site. Our eastern brethren have come nobly up to the work of raising means to furnish the Oakland Office with presses, engine, type, binders’ machinery, &c. We have already two presses, engine, paper cutter and book trimmer, standing press, and type and material sufficient to print the Signs. These are all paid for at a cost of $6,500, including transportation and setting up, and there are eastern funds on hand to purchase more material. It is with great pleasure that we report the success of this enterprise thus far. CIRCULATION OF THE SIGNS.
But now the greatest work is still before us. To secure to the Signs of the Times a wide and judicious circulation that will soon make it self-sustaining, is the most difficult task of all. And yet, by the request and vote of the Board of Directors of the Pacific S. D. A. Publishing Association, we have consented to undertake this work as local editor and general agent, to report to the Board at the close of each three months. And as we enter upon this work we return at the very start to our first plan when we issued the first number of the Signs, to make it a pioneer sheet to be circulated in our own country, and in all others where the English language is read. No one with the least knowledge of publishing would for a moment suppose that the Signs could be sustained by its limited circulation among the comparatively few friends on this coast at present. And to sustain the paper by donations from this people alone, would be found to be a heavy tax upon their liberality. Already a debt of not less than $3,000 is upon the Signs because of circumstances we could not control, which broke up our first plans to make the Signs a pioneer paper, and which put 10,000 copies of The Voice of Truth in the field we had designed for it. The Voice is circulated by the Tract and Missionary Societies. The Signs would have been the choice of our people, and we now set about the work of making it just the paper that all our people, East, West, North, and South, will be pleased to send to their friends, and that the Tract and Missionary workers will send to the ends of the earth. The Voice will cease for the present at the close of the volume, which will have to be cut short to prevent loss upon it. The proposition to furnish a sheet the size of the Signs for $1.00 a year, or one-half the regular price, and pay the postage for that small sum, was a hazardous one. One-fourth discount to those who were not regular, full-paying subscribers would have been liberal. We now suggest that the price of the next volume of the Signs of the Times, postage paid, be put at $3.00, and that it be offered to Tract and Missionary Societies, and to those who wish to send it to their friends, at one-half that sum, or at $1.50 a year, postage paid. Our patrons on this coast will not object to raising the price of the Signs to $3.00 a year when they consider, first, that it is below the usual price of such papers here, and, secondly, that we provide for them to circulate it to others on the coast at one-half this sum. And our eastern friends, who wish to help our young Publishing Association, can do it no better than to pay $3.00 a year for the Signs. More than one-half the expense of publishing an edition of 4,000 copies of the Signs is for editing and type setting. These cost no more for 20,000 copies than for 1,000. Therefore each subscriber who pays $3.00 a year is a benefit to the Signs Office of $1.50. We do not ask any one to exchange the Review for the Signs. But we do ask those patrons of the Review who are able to take both papers to help our young Publishing Association by taking the Signs of the Times. Then if they have too many papers for their own use they can circulate the surplus copies among their friends and neighbors. We appeal to the liberality of the liberal and able, and not to the poor and the stingy. In order to circulate the Signs everywhere, and make up large lists to extend its influence in every part of our land and to other countries, we make the liberal offer to our missionary workers, and also to individuals, to furnish a volume of forty-eight numbers of our paper, common postage paid, for the small sum of $1.50. And let it be borne in mind that more than one-half of our edition of the Signs has been sent east of the Plains for which we have not as yet received ten cents on a copy. And very many of these have been sent into the grasshopper regions of Kansas, Missouri, and Minnesota. We invite the liberalities of our eastern friends to make up this deficiency. Donations for the Pacific Office may be forwarded to Battle Creek or Oakland, as the donors choose. The big tent is now pitched in San Francisco, and the new press is throwing off a sheet one-fourth the size of the Review, in which is a cut of the tent, and particulars as to its location and time of services. The brethren circulate them as fast as they come from the press. We hope to call out the people, and see a good work accomplished. Not far from the tent stands our meeting-house in process of completion. It will be, when completed, the largest and best S. D. Adventist house of worship in the United States. Sabbath, the 9th, was a profitable day to the brethren in San Francisco and Oakland under canvas. Union of effort on the part of all, and a firm trust in God, were the subjects considered. It was stated that sacred history recorded great acts by feeble means; but that which showed the hand of God also showed united action, and most perfect order. The march of the people of Israel around Jericho in simplicity and order, and the fall of the walls of that city, were cited as an illustration. The Camp-Meetings.
By Uriah Smith
THE camp-meeting season for 1875 is past. We returned Tuesday night, Oct. 12, from the Indiana meeting, the last of the series, a report of which from the pen of Bro. Canright will be found in this number. Fifteen camp-meetings in all have been held, twelve of which we have attended. We have seen much good accomplished; but the full results of the meetings we shall know only when from the eternal world, we look back upon these scenes of earthly labors. Probably not far from six thousand Sabbath keepers, in all, have attended these different meetings. And most of these expressed verbally a determination to make a better record in the Christian life for time to come, than in the past. If all these resolutions are carried out, what an army of workers will there be in the field the coming year; and what results may we not expect from their labors. In nearly every Conference, notwithstanding the scarcity of laborers, there has been an apparent growth. Forty-four new churches have been received into the various Conferences, eleven strong men have been ordained to the work of the ministry, and a good number have for the first time received license to present the truth to the people. Every meeting at which it has been our privilege to be present, has closed with a triumphant influence in favor of the truth and the cause. There have been in some instances seasons of darkness and periods of labor; as it would be very singular if the enemy did not at such important meetings make his heaviest assaults upon us; but light has broken in, freedom has been gained, and victory has turned on the side of the Lord’s cause. We believe that invariably the meetings have had a reviving influence upon the cause in the various States, and those who attended have gone from them with new hope and courage, to labor with fresh and increasing ardor in the cause we love. And the effect upon those without, so far as we have been able to learn, has been good. Some of course can look upon the work of S. D. Adventists only through the colored and distorting goggles of prejudice and opposition. But the more solid and sensible portion of the people in the vicinity of the various meetings have been impressed with the good order maintained, the spirit of sobriety manifested, and the earnest presentation of the points of our faith. And their manner has seemed to say in as plain language as words, Here is something worthy of our attention and investigation. So ears are everywhere open to listen to these things, and calls are everywhere rising on the air for the living preacher to come and tell them what these things mean. The work is growing upon our hands, and the field is spreading out before us into marvelous proportions. The papers have been full and favorable in their notices of the meetings, thus bringing this movement so prominently to the attention of the people, that we cannot henceforth do our work in a corner if we would. In all this we acknowledge the hand of the Lord of the harvest, and the leader of all the armies of his truth. With the most unfeigned and lively pleasure, we think of the many new acquaintances we have formed from Maine to Iowa, during these meetings, and the many words of good cheer, and offices of kindness received from them. They have our thanks. Never before have we been able to appreciate so fully what the truth is doing in rallying so many noble souls around its banner. Not to boast, but to honor the precious truth of God, and to magnify his name, we boldly say, that we do not believe any cause having no greater number of adherents, can show such an amount of moral worth as has been developed by this message. We have been deeply impressed with the fact that we are seeing a fulfilment of the words uttered by the seer of Patmos, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Some thousands of them we already have seen. Others we shall be happy to see, if the providence of God so permit. And soon we hope to meet them all clothed in fadeless robes of light around the great white throne. Our School.
By James White
The Battle Creek College is worthy of the support of all our people, and the patronage of those who wish to prepare their minds by study for lives of usefulness. Our people from the Atlantic to the Pacific should prayerfully consider the matter of sending their children to our school where they may be under the influence of the present truth, rather than to send them to schools where there are influences to lead them away from God and his truth. We are sad that at any former period there has been a want of moral power in some to maintain that discipline at the seat of our school that would give our people confidence to send their sons and their daughters to our school. But we feel very confident that those who may have failed somewhat in past time are now fully aroused to the importance of thorough work. And there are men at the head of our institutions at Battle Creek who will not yield to those influences which are ever manifested in lowering the standard of morals and religion. But we have taken up our pen to say that something should be done immediately for a hundred young men among us whose minds are being exercised on the subject of preaching. Some of these are nearly or quite destitute of means, and are hesitating, and losing time for want of proper encouragement and a little help. A young Dane of promise in San Francisco, who expects at no far-distant day to go to Denmark to teach the word of God, asked our opinion of his going to our school at Battle Creek. We at once replied, Go, and we will help you. What we mean by this is, that this young man who gives himself to the Lord, as one of his missionaries to the world, should at least be helped to the amount of his board and tuition at our school one year. And if others do not feel it a duty to assist, we will cheerfully do it alone. If this brother meets the matters of fare to Michigan, books, and clothing, he will do well. A fund should be immediately raised to assist first-class young men to prepare for the ministry who need help. The several State Conference committees should take this matter in hand. We recommend that they immediately correspond with Prof. S. Brownsberger, Eld. Uriah Smith, and Dr. J. H. Kellogg, all of Battle Creek, Mich., on this subject. All cases should be referred to these brethren, and their decision obtained before giving encouragement of help. It is only the clearest cases, where full sanction could be given by our Conferences, that should be encouraged. But while we should be on our guard against impositions, we should be exceedingly earnest to secure all clear cases. Let a fund be raised at once to help worthy young men who need help. We give $100 for this object, and invite all to help. Help is wanted now. If our people could realize the importance of immediate action on such matters they would feel very unhappy in holding their means from the Lord’s cause, and means would flow rapidly into the treasury. Pledges on our school should be paid as soon as possible, and a fund of $10,000 should be raised to furnish our school with apparatus, seats for one hundred more students, and to help those young men who should pass through a brief course of study, and hasten to the last work of gathering souls from the “highways and hedges.” God bless our school, and may our good college building be crowded at the winter term. It is claimed by some that the teachings of Seventh-day Adventists are infidel in their nature, and tend to infidelity only. A friend once told us that our books would make more infidels than Tom Paine’s Age of Reason, and the REVIEW was not long since returned from a Y. M. C. A. reading room, on the ground that they did not think it proper to harbor infidel publications. This is a serious charge if true; and we do well, therefore, to take some pains to ascertain the facts in the case. We have the impression, from our own observation, and from personal knowledge of quite a number of cases, that the statement is exactly the opposite of the truth; that, so far from making infidels, there is nothing like our views of the prophecies, the nature of man, &c., to rescue men from infidelity. And to test the matter, we have a request to make, which we hope all those concerned will take a little pains to answer. It is this: that all those who have been brought by S. D. Adventist teachings from infidelity or skepticism in any of its forms to embrace Christianity, and accept the Bible as the book of God, will drop us a postal card to this Office, giving name, address, and date of conversion. It will not take much time for each one to do this; and if they will attend to it at once, we shall have something tangible to show the objector how fast our doctrines are making infidels. Self-Deception and the Honest Heart
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.