p. 16 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 12. (3/20/1901)

Earlier text: Rich in Helpfulness Cheap in Price

TO OUR PATRONS.

By Editor

Please be careful to write all names of persons and places plainly.

Send money by Post-office Money Order, Express Order, or Bank Draft on New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

Orders and Drafts should be made payable to the Pacific Press Publishing Co., or to SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Paper money or silver should be sent in a registered letter.

Registered mail is safe. Unregistered mail is at the risk of the sender.

Postage-stamps will be received for small amounts.

No formal receipt is sent unless by special request. The address label on your paper will indicate the time to which your subscription is paid. In case of non-receipt of papers, or any other irregularity, please notify us immediately.

When subscriptions expire no more papers are sent to the party except by special arrangement.

You are requested to watch the date on your label, and renew early, and save the loss of papers. We can not always furnish missing numbers.

When requesting change of address be sure to give both old and new addresses.

Important.—If you order SIGNS, Our Little Friend, books, etc., at the same time, use a separate sheet of paper for each. If this request is complied with it will materially assist in the prompt and accurate despatch of the business.

When writing to the editor be sure to use a separate sheet of paper.

OUR premium watches are going nicely and are giving good satisfaction.

UNDER date of Feb. 24, 1901, one of our agents writes, “I am still selling the Outlook Number, and splendid success.”

THE Bible we are now offering as a premium with the SIGNS one year for $3.50, or free for five new yearly subscriptions at $1.50 each, is the best Bible we have ever offered as a premium. It is better bound, has larger and clearer type, and is in every way a superior book for the price.

IF your label date reads like one of these it is time for you to renew your subscription:— Edward Bray May 1 Albert Marsh May 1 C B Thomas Apr 1

ONE agent in a city ordered 800 recent copies of the SIGNS, and when last heard from was selling about 70 copies per day, at 5 cents. A lady agent at Pittsburg is selling 400 SIGNS each week; another at the same place is selling 100 per week; another at Sioux City is selling 200 per week; and a gentleman in one of our large Eastern cities is selling 400 SIGNS each week. There is much room for more agents of the same class.

For Sale

For Sale.—A good house on corner lot, 60x125, next Students’ Home, Healdsburg; 8 rooms, pantry, and bathroom. Apply to S. McElhanny, Healdsburg, Cal.

ANNUAL MEETING.

By E. C. Chapman

THE regular annual meeting of the Society of the Seventh-day Adventist Church of Oakland, Cal., will be held at the house of worship, corner Twelfth and Brush Streets, Wednesday evening, April 3, 1901, at 7:30 o'clock. A general attendance of resident members is desired. E. C. CHAPMAN, Sec.

LOOK AT THIS FINE BIBLE

By Editor

A GENUINE OXFORD

With Helps : Bound in Excellent Style

Everybody having one is pleased with it : Get one and it will please you

For five new yearly subscriptions at $1.50 each

WE WILL SEND THIS BIBLE FREE

Sent with SIGNS, one year, to old or new subscriber, for $3.50

Our aim in placing this fine Bible at such a low price is to increase the circulation of the SIGNS, and to give our friends a benefit

ADDRESS

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

The U. S. Weather Bureau again Chooses the New Century

In July, 1899, the U. S. Weather Bureau placed with us an initial order for 50 New Centurys, and these machines have proved so satisfactory that the Department has made a contract with us for the ensuing fiscal year.

The New Century has a future. It is the latest product of typewriter evolution. It represents the highest point in typewriter quality and equipment.

United Typewriter and Supplies Co.

Truth Beneath the Tinsel

By Editor

Glittering generalities of speech and great pomp and show, dazzle and delude many, but they should never be allowed to hide for one moment the principles of truth and justice and liberty. They will not in the judgment of God. Why be deceived by them now?

In our next issue there will begin the nine articles on the proper union of religion and the State, by C. P. Bollman, as we noticed last week. There will be printed at the same time in our Home department a series of articles, intensely practical and readable articles, from David Paulson, M.D. These we have before noticed. The paper during these nine weeks will be sent to any address for 25 cents.

The article in this week's paper entitled “Himself He Can Not Save,” from the pen of Pastor E. J. Waggoner, is most opportune indeed, coming, as it does, in connection with the Sunday-school lesson in which this subject is introduced. Both the teachers and students in the Sunday-schools will derive great benefit from the article, and we hope none will miss it. We trust also that the article in the editorial department entitled “Thru Ignorance,” will be helpful to the Sunday-school worker.

Men often use gilding and glitter and tinsel and trappings of royalty to hide what is beneath. Many a person made to appear royal, by human art, is like a whited sepulcher. The royalty of truth and justice and love and liberty are innate. Often they are vailed; but when they do shine out, as they will when Christ appears, it will not be an outward resplendency put on to deceive, but the forthshining of their essential glory. God vails their glory now that we may choose them for their own worth and finally be glorified with them.

Here is something worth thinking about, from the Sentinel of Liberty: “If you are inclined to make light of the idea that religious intolerance can come again in this free country, remember that our civilization still maintains one of the cruelest institutions that ever cursed mankind,—the rum shop. With the despairing cries of women and little children continually ringing in her ears, Civilization steadily refuses to remove the cause,—the saloon. And why is this?—It is because men love themselves better than they love their neighbors. Let self-interest demand laws that will oppress other people, and such legislation will be forthcoming speedily. The love of money and the lust for power lead men to trample human rights underfoot to-day as ruthlessly as was ever done in former times.”

Righteousness is not a matter of dress or days. It is just as good in the pre-Lenten season and the post-Lenten season as it is in Lent. It is a matter of the life. The idea of a few days of mortification and a year of selfish pleasure is foreign to both the letter and spirit of the Gospel. O, that all professed Christians could know that Jesus Christ—and hence Christianity—is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever!

What Next?—Many Sunday-schools are adopting “Decision day” (March 24), “a day decided on by Sunday-school workers, when special effort shall be made to bring the unsaved members of the school to a decision for Christ.” Now why not accept the day given by Inspiration: “To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts;” “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation”? The appointed times of men hide ever the appointed times of God,

For His Good

For His Good.—A rhymster in the Chicago Record notes in various verses the taking of the Philippines and other islands, the wars in China and South Africa, all for the good of those warred against, and closes thus:—

“There’s a moral to my song, But it won’t detain you long; For I couldn’t make it plainer if I would; If you dare commit a wrong On the weak because you’re strong, You may do it—if you do it for his good.”

Many of the “benevolent” schemes of this world will look far different in the judgment of God.

Sin has affected not only this earth, but the universe; for “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” Rom. 8:22. All God’s creation is in normal sympathy and accord. When discord entered thru sin it marred the music of the whole. A little broken cog on a distant shaft affects the fly-wheel of the great engine. The prick of a pin on the little toe affects heart and brain of a great man. So the sin and its curse upon this little world have affected the harmony of the universe of God. Could astronomers and scientists but take this fact into account they would reason more correctly than they now frequently do. The knowledge would better help them to adjust their reckonings and explain many things now unexplained.

Objects of Worship.—One of our correspondents recalls the homage paid a noted actress throughout the United States, the worship of a native saint in the Philippines, in which the United States soldiers took part, the carnivals and orgies of certain orders and secret societies, and asks, “Whom do the people of the United States worship?” Well, friend, they mostly worship, as men have in all ages, self. “Men shall be lovers of self.” Sometimes this idolatry is manifest in outward images of the form of selfishness most dominant, sometimes not. The only cure there is for this idolatry is the religion of Jesus Christ.

Train your boys to do something. “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.” “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” These are divine truths. Jesus learned the carpenter’s trade. Paul was a tent-maker. Moses was a shepherd. God gave man work as a blessing. One penitentiary warden declared that less than one per cent. of his prisoners had a trade. In his penitentiary he never had a shoemaker, a carpenter, a tailor, or a printer. There was only one man in the prison who claimed to have a trade; he said he was a painter, and this was doubtful.

“Labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us; Rest from all petty vexations that meet us; Rest from sin’s promptings that ever entreat us; Rest from world sirens that lure us to ill.”

YOU WILL WISH TO READ THEM.

By Editor

“READ what?”—The articles we will publish soon from the pen of Pastor George W. Reaser, entitled “The End of Sin’s Dominion.” There will be six in the series. Four are now in hand, the topics of which are as follows:—

Will Saved Man Fall Again?

“The Light of the Wicked Put Out.”

“Who Shall Change the Body of Our Humiliation.”

The Necessity of the Millennial Judgment.

Each of these are independent, and yet all are connected. But these are only one excellent, substantial course in the splendid menu the SIGNS is constantly presenting before its readers.

A Cruel Practise.

Yes, it is very cruel, the practise of frightening children. In one town in New Jersey, a short time ago, a child was frightened to death by the sight of a negress’ face. The colored woman was harmless, but the child’s people and others had used her to frighten their children into submission or obedience. The children of this intense age are sensitive and nervous enough under the best of circumstances. It is not meant to be so, but it is wickedly cruel to tease or goad a child to anger, or to frighten it in any way, and worst of all by playing upon a superstitious imagination. Teach the child calmness and courage, thru faith in a great, kind heavenly Father.

INEXCUSABLE

In speaking of the great loss of the steamer Rio de Janeiro, an Eastern paper truly says:—

“The loss of one hundred and thirty-five lives by the wreck of the steamer City of Rio de Janeiro, when she was approaching the Golden Gate and struck a sunken rock, is a tragedy as appalling as it seems inexcusable; and the vessel was in the hands of the pilot. And then, how is it that in these days of water-compartment-built steamers this great vessel went down in a quiet sea? And how was it that this perilous rock had not been removed, in whole or in part? These and other questions will present themselves, and the public will demand some answer. Over sixty millions for harbors, and rivers, and creeks, and a great ship, with its freight of human lives, is destroyed in a moment at the entrance to one of the finest harbors of North America. What an anomaly! What an inexcusable tragedy!”

COMBINATION OFFER.

By Editor

UNTIL May 31, 1901, we make the following special offer:—

The SIGNS OF THE TIMES, regular price, $1.50.

The Sentinel of Liberty, regular price, $1.00.

Both for one year for only $2.00. Send orders to this office.

There Is a Utah Gospel Mission

There is a Utah Gospel Mission in Cleveland, O., the secretary of which is Rev. John G. Nutting, 739 Republic Street, Cleveland, which is putting forth earnest effort to enlighten people in general respecting the heathenism of Mormonism, and to save Mormons from themselves. For this purpose it is publishing tracts setting forth the “true Mormon doctrine,” some of which is kept in the background by Mormon evangelists. Further information may be obtained by addressing the secretary as above. Packets of samples of literature may be had for 10 cents.

Professor Delitzsch tells us that “Babylonia is the land . . . of the angels of the Cherubim and the Seraphim. Some of the pictures found on these tablets correspond exactly to our Biblical conception of these beings.” But this does not mean that the Bible writers borrowed from Babylon. It rather is proof that paganism either borrowed the thoughts and facts of revealed religion or generally perverted them.

“The Missionary Magazine” for March has interesting articles on Finland, India, Malaysia, Syria, and other fields, several of which are illustrated. This excellent magazine is only 50 cents a year. Try it. Its address is room 1906, 150 Nassau Street, New York.

Massachusetts is seeking to aid common drunkards by committing them to work upon State farms till reformed. It might be a good thing to commit the drunkard-maker also. The farm should be in charge of a true-blue, wide-awake temperance man.