WHAT to some may seem to be good news from the great mission fields contains, on the other hand, a great element of danger. Just recently five sectional conferences with missionaries in various parts of China have been held, concluding with a national conference in Shanghai, March 11-14. Delegates were there from the churches of the whole nation, various Protestant denominations. The Missionary Review of the World for July says: “The conference spoke with positiveness in favor of a single missionary church in China, eliminating all Western denominational lines. . . . It was urgently recommended that all churches should discard every distinctive name, and assume only the single title ‘The Christian Church of China.’” A hymnal for all union churches and a book of prayer for voluntary use in public worship were ordered prepared. And to help the thing along, native Chinese should be received to a share in the administration of foreign funds used for the support of their churches.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
In Central India, the same journal tells us, “word comes of another movement for a union of the Christian churches. In the Jubbalpore Conference on federation, representing seven of the leading missionary societies working in India, there was a declaration in favor of a federation of ‘all churches and societies that believe in God through Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord and Saviour, and accept the word of God as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament as the supreme rule of faith and practise, and whose teaching in regard to God, sin, and salvation is in general agreement with the great body of Christian truth and fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith.’”
In the Philippine Islands a Christian college is planned to be under the direction of seven Protestant missionary societies. Now if there are no real distinctive doctrines or beliefs in these Christian societies, certainly it is well that they should unite together; but if in order to effect this it is necessary to suppress distinctive doctrines involving conscientious conviction regarding the teaching of God’s word, such union will be a breeder of evil rather than good. For instance, what will our Baptist brethren do, who have held through all these long centuries to immersion as the only baptism? It used to be—it is still, we believe, with many—a matter of faith based on decided conviction. The Word teaches it. Will they relinquish it, or will they feel that their message and mission including that is to the world? Seventh-day Adventists feel that they have a message for the world—God’s message, a message designed for all peoples, whatever their belief or nationality. With their view of the Word, they could not for one moment relinquish their identity, nor could they unite in the parceling out of the country among the various denominations. Such action must lead to measures of oppression, and very much needless strife. The unity that Christ desired is unity first of all in life and in truth. No mere federation can meet the unity which He desired.
Spirituality and Interpretation
He who misses the spiritual lessons of the Bible misses right interpretation always. For instance, there is before us an article with the title “How They Have Garbled the Gospel of Christ.” The scripture considered is the parable of the talents in the 25th chapter of Matthew. The writer contends that the interpretation of that chapter has largely been brought about by the interpolation of the five words “the kingdom of heaven is” in verse 14, and holds that the men who improved their talents represent the wicked, rich bondholders of to-day, while the man who buried his talent in the earth represents that sort of Socialist who would not serve under the hard master that wanted him to improve his talent. Now the use of that talent is in harmony with our Lord’s parable regarding the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is spiritual, and the object of that parable is spiritual, and the talents which are there given are spiritual gifts which God bestows upon His children to use for Him in the salvation of precious souls. And the man who rightly uses those gifts is the man who will win souls to the kingdom of God, gather in redeemed sinners for the Master; but the man who refuses to use it is the selfish man who buries his talent in the earth, and he it is that may be classed with the bloated bondholder and other selfish men whose whole purpose is to live for self. Thus much for the interpretation of the parable.
There is another item of interest in the long article, and that is the meaning of words printed in italics in our Bibles. Of course, all intelligent Bible students know that they are there because the idiom of the original is so unlike the idiom of the English, and the English translator has done the best he could to make it plain to the English reader. In order to do this, he must sometimes supply words in order to meet the idioms of the language. This writer claims that he sent out inquiries to a score of persons, asking the significance of words in the Bible which appear in italics. He sent them to men of every school and class, and he gives three answers, one from James Cardinal Gibbons, one from the Christian Science Publishing Society, and one from the Moody Bible Institute. The Moody Bible Institute and the Christian Science Publishing Society both give practically the same answer, and a correct one, too, one saying that the words are interpolated for the purpose of making better English idiom, and the other that it was necessary to add these words in order to give proper construction to the sentences; but it is a strange thing if Cardinal Gibbons answered as it is stated that he did, that the words in italics are for emphasis. Of course, every Bible student knows to the contrary. Sometimes mistakes are made by the translators, but as a general thing they are correct. Certain it is, no great doctrine of the Bible is affected by the great English versions.
Evangelism Dying Out.
The question “Is evangelism dying out?” has been raised in the Christian Herald, and the suggestion made that there should be an “Evangelistic National Federation.” Some correspondents believe that it is not dying out; but their very approval of such a federation, and their anxiety for it, clearly show their fears. One man—James Scovill—who says that he has been “an evangelist, working in the churches for many years,” associated with Moody and Sankey, declares: “It is a sad but very real fact that evangelism is dying out. And why?—First, because in many pulpits infidelity has come in, and the great foundation truths of the Bible are not preached; and secondly, in many churches most of the members have become lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” There are many truly evangelical pastors, but Mr. Scovill speaks truly of the general trend. Yet God calls for the preaching of His “everlasting gospel” now, and hungry hearts are waiting to receive it. But to be effective it must be given in God’s setting and in His way.
Germany and the Jesuits
IN 1872 Germany undertook to expel the Jesuits from her domain. That ban has been lifted. The German Center in the Reichstag has been too strong, and it is reasonable to believe that support to the government means compensation. Anyway, the Jesuits are returning. Here are five items taken from a Catholic paper, the Western Watchman, of St. Louis, of March 27, 1913. They show how Roman Catholics feel about it:
“Three hundred and fifty-one priests were driven out of Germany in 1872. They were obscure men whose absence would under ordinary circumstances cause no ripple on the religious surface of the nation. But the Catholics of the fatherland said, Those priests must come back. Windhorst said, They must come back. The Center has for forty years repeated, They must come back. Now the German emperor takes off his helmet and says, ‘Gentlemen, you may come back.’”
“The Israelites roamed in exile for forty years. It is just forty years since the Jesuits were exiled from Germany. Now the Wacht am Rhein presents arms to them, and Catholic Germany has a gaudeamus.”
“The Jesuits have begun their triumphal march back to Germany after an exile of over forty years. They have won a splendid victory without striking a blow. The Catholics of the world fight the battles of their persecuted clergy.”
“The Bundesrath has capitulated. The Jesuits are back in Germany. ‘We are coming, Kaiser Wilhelm, not a hundred, but a thousand strong—and no thanks to your majesty.’ Laws against Catholics, if not repealed, eventually rot away.”
“William understands Protestants thoroly. He knows that they are a mild set of lunatics, and any kind of an argument goes down with them. He now tells them that the reason he recalls the Jesuits is they have a German head; as if it were the head that was coming back.”
The Last Accusation.
The last thing the automobile is accused of is that it is responsible for the decline of the country church. In Kansas it is declared that “about 1,000 country churches in Kansas have been deserted because of lack of interest in church work.” People in the country ride in their autos into the city to hear the great men. At the same time, it is charged that the city people leave the city churches on Sunday for a ride in the country. But has the preaching aught to do with it? Or does the condition of hearts have any effect on church attendance?
To Eliminate Socialism.—
The Roman Catholics have what is called the Catholic Social Service Commission. Its object as stated by the Rev. M. S. Ryan, in the St. Louis Republic of June 18, 1913, is the organization of Catholic working men. He said: “The labor-unions are not yet in the hands of the Socialists, and a great body of their members favor Christian reform, but there is a dangerous element in these unions which must be guarded against.” The effort evidently is to eliminate Socialism.
PAMPHLETS
That you may be familiar with what is obtainable in the way of Bible helps in pamphlet form, we give the following list and descriptions:
Change of the Sabbath25 Cents
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Christian Science and Divine Healing15 Cents
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Christ Our Advocate10 Cents
Fully illustrated. This thoroly explains the sanctuary question, the 2300-day period, and other vital points.
Helps to Bible Study25 Cents
A series of Bible readings to aid in study, and in teaching on Bible subjects.
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Saints' Inheritance10 Cents
Description of the home of the saved.
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The Spirit World and the Future Life10 Cents
Wonderful manifestations of Spiritualism from a Bible standpoint.
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Sanctuary
“Christ Our Advocate,” a pamphlet which can be secured at this office for ten cents, is an invaluable aid in studying the sanctuary question. It explains the building and purpose of the earthly sanctuary, patterned after the heavenly, and pictures the present work of Christ, “Our Advocate,” in the heavenly sanctuary. The great prophetic 2,300 day period is thoroly explained, as are also prophecies relating to the conditions in the world during the time that the heavenly sanctuary cleansing work is going on.
A MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY
A New Pamphlet on the Sanctuary Question
A study of our Lord’s sacrifice and more excellent ministry, which explains the subject of the sanctuary and its services, and the ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary for His people. Has 18 chapters, more than 200 pages. Price, 25 cents, post-paid.
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These maps have been endorsed by Historical Authorities and by Religious Workers, irrespective of Creed, as the best maps on the subject ever printed, and we are glad to provide this helpful volume for our Bible Students.
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OUR LITTLE FRIEND
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The Great Out-of-Doors and Some of Its Delights and Wonders, Children of the Bible, Our Feathered Friends, Dumb Creatures of the World, Confidential Talks with Boys and Girls about Themselves. What a Boy Can Do. What a Girl Can Do, How to Spend Rainy Days. The Bulletin Board.
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Sure Cures for Heart Dis-Ease
By Benjamin Keech
By Benjamin Keech
So many persons are suffering of that popular complaint, heart dis-ease, that I think it is time I offered some of my remedies. No matter whether you are afflicted with one ailment or five, I can cure them all. The most common form of heart dis-ease is, perhaps, the broken heart. Almost every one imagines he has one; and if you are really suffering with such a bother, the salve of love for “all persons in general” instead of “one person in particular” will mend and heal the battered organ. That's an old remedy, but it's very efficacious.
However, you must keep your mind off your heart while it is “knitting.” Otherwise, it may break again. Remain busy at work, even at times when you feel like “crying your heart out.” Still, the right kind of tears, properly shed, are really a good remedy. Healthy lachrymal fluid will help wash your troubles away, but morbid tears only make one more irritable. If, at first, you can’t be cheerful all the time, endeavor to weep while you are doing nice, beautiful things for humanity—not while you are pitying yourself.
The crushed heart is, in most ways, like the broken heart. Its owner, however, was a “soft” person; and his heart, instead of being sharply broken, was flatly crushed. The pain becomes dull, aching, intense; and if allowed to harden, these hearts become very serious. They should be treated with consideration and poultices of forgetfulness-of-self.
Cease to remember that you have a pain, dear sufferer, and begin to attend to the aches in other people’s chests. There are plenty that require attention, you will find. And the little, individual woes in our own hearts amount to nothing compared with the wo of the world. Therefore, why not try to relieve some of the really big troubles you’ve heard about, thus losing your own small one?
Hard-heartedness, painfully common, is generally the result of being disappointed in having one’s own foolish way. Indeed, selfish people are very liable to suffer of this affliction. Then, again, the person whose broken heart was healed too quickly, or by improper methods, is likely to be left hard-hearted. For this trouble endeavor to experience a change of heart. Instead of rehearsing your woes, cultivate a happy disposition—preferably in a garden, or out-of-doors. Also spend three hundred and sixty-five days each year doing nice things for people near you—preferably folk you do not love. This is a bitter dose, but the cure is excellent.
The above prescription can be taken with fine results by persons afflicted with heartburn. How often we discover our poor, foolish hearts burning with hatred, envy, and other bad emotions! And how charmingly we might calm the pain if we’d only sprinkle heartsease on some one else’s injuries!
Most of my remedies, when analyzed, contain about the same antidotes and soothing properties. But strange to say, the place to get the prescriptions filled is right in our own deranged hearts. I know the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” but it is the seat of good desires, too.
When first you discover things going wrong, take the Bible in one hand, and give the organ in question a thoro examination, taking note of all the good and bad qualities therein. Then faithfully cultivate the former, using the prayer, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me;” and in time you’ll be able to crowd out everything objectionable. Thus you’ll be relieved of many distressing afflictions.
Heart paralysis is caused by shocks of misfortune. Gently lay the sufferer on the softest bed in the house, elevate his mind, loosen the tension of his nerves, and inform him that it might have been worse. Kindly administer good cheer at regular intervals, also irregular, and don’t allow him to turn blue. Weak hearts should be encouraged to grow strong. Sometimes they can’t develop unless some one besides their owners furnishes the strength. If you know of any one whose worst failing is a weak heart, for pity’s sake go to the rescue. Sensitive children and young persons are perhaps the leading sufferers.
Fatty degeneration of the heart is a peculiar dis-ease. It is acquired by living off the fat of the land to such an extent that one becomes selfish and his heart degenerates. The cure is the same as for hard-heartedness, etc.
Improper circulation, or repression of good impulses, is another distressing affliction, the symptoms of which are pains in the conscience, cold thoughts, and absence of the right kind of mind. The arteries and veins (of good) become so clogged with forms of selfishness that love, kindness, and goodness can find no chance to circulate. So they often die.
Bad blood is the cause of many bad hearts; and bad hearts, lungs, and stomachs are the cause of more bad blood. When that wonderful, life-giving fluid gets tainted with hate, impure air, greed, improper food, spiritual indifference, and other kinds of laziness, it isn’t any wonder that a person suffers all the different varieties of heart dis-ease at the same time. And it isn’t any wonder that one’s mind becomes deranged, when laden with such germs.
Therefore, here’s a nice, practical, up-to-date recipe for a good, clean heart. Provide your stomach with pure but not too much food, your lungs with even more pure air than they can use, and your mind with unlimited, good, healthy thoughts, acquired by diligently studying the greatest of all health books, the Bible. Plenty of exercise should also be taken. Go to work at once, and do some beautiful deeds, praying over them before and afterward. This will develop your weak heart, and make it strong.
Heart failure is the result of all the other troubles combined. Sometimes, however, it precedes heart paralysis. It is certainly very annoying to try to go to work at any task, and find that your heart fails you. When this happens, search your chest for all the grit, sand, pluck, and courage therein, and faithfully cultivate. Energetically water your good resolutions with determination, and “don’t allow a single weed of fear, doubt, or laziness to choke the growing plants.”
Some folks afflicted with heart failure—foolish as they are—have cured themselves by plunging right into the dreaded task, even when feeling as “weak as a rag.” It certainly shows strength upon which to build; and if others fail, I advise you to try that remedy. However, a less strenuous route is generally taken by most persons. They get on good terms with their troubles, and peacefully glide into the harbor of whole-heartedness.
There are many other comforting things in our Guide-Book about hearts.
Wrong to Sell Tobacco
The following resolutions by a storekeeper on selling tobacco are worth quoting as an example for others:
“1. I will not sell tobacco, because I consider the habit of using it degrading, selfish, sensual, indolent, and injurious, and feel it to be my duty to do all I can by example and precept to put an end to a practice pernicious and detestable.
“2. Because smoking has been the means of ruining thousands of young men with bright prospects, who have received excellent and religious educations, but who, to imitate the fop, have, during a walk after the hours of business, taken the cigar or the pipe, the mouth has become dry, the tongue parched, and to allay which, they have resorted to the saloon; the glass has been called for, and emptied; another glass is taken, and thus the novice becomes a habitual smoker and drinker, and in time falls a prey to intemperance with its inevitable consequences—loss of character, health, property, body, and soul.
“3. Because I believe it to be wrong to encourage a custom which necessarily occasions a sinful waste of property, when so many distressed families, benevolent societies, and the cause of the Redeemer, require pecuniary assistance, and are dying for it.
“4. Because I believe that much valuable time is squandered upon the pipe by professing Christians, and even by ministers, which might and ought to be devoted to the distribution of tracts, the instruction of the young, visiting the sick, and doing good.
“5. Because it is a well-ascertained fact that a large proportion of those who have been reclaimed from intemperance, and have returned to their former habits, have attributed their downfall to the continuance of the practice of smoking. The temperance cause can not advance while tobacco hedges up its way.
“6. Because experience has proved to me that I could not effectually induce the smoker to abandon his habit while I continue to sell, the usual reply being, ‘If it is wrong to buy, it is wrong to sell.’
“7. Because I feel assured that though it may be a loss to me in a pecuniary view, still I shall be more than recompensed for the sacrifice made, by an inward satisfaction of having acted conscientiously, and with a sincere desire to promote the welfare of my fellow men.”
A Christian woman says: “I and my husband have brought up eight children, and, as you say tobacco is injurious, if we give up the sale of it, I know that God will provide something else for us to sell instead of it. We will sell no more.”
“Set a mark,” said God to the man with the writer’s inkhorn by his side, “upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst” of Jerusalem; and will not He, the righteous God, observe those who forego the gains from tobacco for conscience’ sake? He will observe; yes, and observe, too, the callous venders of the pernicious drug which mars the visage, demoralizes the soul, and exchanges health and happiness for sickness and domestic sorrow. Let all who derive gain from selling tobacco remember that theirs is a course in opposition to the command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Tobacco tends to destroy both body and soul.—Christian Statesman.
Fruit for India
If there is a land on earth where provision should be made for the conservation of the health of missionaries, that land is India. For years the Seventh-day Adventists on the Pacific Coast have shipped dried fruit to India. It has been shipped by those who had never been to India. This year its shipping will be looked after by Brother J. S. James, a missionary on furlough, who knows, by experience, of the dietetic difficulties of that land. Dried prunes, raisins, pears, apples, apricots, are needed;15also nuts and olives. There are not a few who will be glad to donate quantities of some one or more of these fruits. They will be sterilized, packed in sealed tins, properly labeled, and shipped. Some may not have fruit who would like to help. Money is also needed to purchase tins and pay freight. All who are interested, write J. S. James, St. Helena, California, to whom all fruit should be shipped, carriage prepaid.
WANTED
Comfortable home, for attractive girl of seven, in Adventist family. Address Mrs. Rose Macy, 2612 Burton Avenue, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Fireside Correspondence School
Fireside Correspondence School—Fills the chinks. A boon to the isolated. Cradle to college its scope. New catalog ready. Write for copy. C. C. Lewis, principal, Takoma Park, Washington, D. C.
FOR SALE
Five acres mostly in fruit and grapes, four-room cottage, well of soft water, small stable for horse and wagon, pleasant location about one mile from Pacific College by trail, further by road. J. H. Shaffer, St. Helena, Cal.
FOR EXCHANGE
A large seven-room house in Portland, lot 50 x 100. Young bearing orchard, chicken park. Walking distance church school, near car line. Price $2,700. For house and lot in or near Los Angeles. Same price or less with easy terms. Address Mrs. P. A. Frizell, 1480 E. Glisan St., Portland, Oregon.
Heralds of His Coming
“Heralds of His Coming,” Apples of Gold Library, No. 85, gives an outline of the unmistakable signs of the nearness of Christ’s coming. Increase of riches, of crime, of knowledge; last-day scoffers; signs in sun, moon, and stars; peace and safety cry; preparation for war; great spiritual declension,—are some of these evidences. This popular tract, a copy, 3 cents, post-paid; a hundred, $1.50. This office.
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