p. 10 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 1. (11/7/1892)

UNHALLOWED DIVERSIONS.

By The Christian Advocate

No spiritually-minded man needs the restraints of law to keep him from participating in diversions which are hostile to the Spirit of Christ. Having once taken such amusements into his life, he knows that when he did find pleasure in them it was alloyed with anguish and vexation of spirit. He was stung by the pangs of an angry conscience. His consciousness taught him that, instead of contributing to the elevation of his higher nature, they strengthened his ignoble passions, and tended to the degradation of his manhood. More than this, in becoming a Christian he received Christ into his soul. His Lord's indwelling became a fountain of spiritual life within him—"a spring of sparkling water, springing up into eternal life," a love begotten by the eternal Spirit, constantly aspiring to its divine Source, and fully satisfying the need of his higher, nobler nature.

The rich delight of this new spiritual life quenched his thirst for diversions which minister to the desires of the carnal mind. He illustrated in himself the verity of Christ's saying, that whoever receives him "shall never thirst" for the things which were once his delight. He is dead to them. His will is set on minding the things of the Spirit. Should he unhappily become conscious of a rising desire for diversions hostile to his hidden life in Christ, he would be alarmed at it as a symptom of declining spirituality, and would bid it get behind him. Thus the spiritually-minded man needs no restraining law to keep him from participation in amusements offensive to Christ, since Christ's will is his law in his hours of recreation as at all other times.

—The Christian Advocate.

THE BLESSING OF ADVERSITY.

Did you ever think, when in a pessimistic mood, when your life is clouded with distrust and disappointment, and you even wish to die, that perhaps while you are in this state of misery and despair, you may be playing your part in the great plan of creation, and brightening some field of life for contemporaries or posterity? Many a great genius has pined in solitude and misery, and thought he was of no use in the world, when he was really blessing thousands. Said Lord Bacon, "Virtue, like sweet odors, is most fragrant when crushed."

Milton, stricken with blindness, undertook the production of that masterpiece of English literature, of which Cowper said: "Was there ever anything so delightful as the music of 'Paradise Lost'? It is like that of a fine organ—has the fullest and deepest tones of majesty, with all the softness and elegance of the Dorian flute." Paganini, in prison, and reduced to the extreme of finding diversion on a violin with but a single string, gained such skill that he achieved a musical miracle, and wrought wondrous melody on the G string alone, an art that has been copied by later performers to the delight of listening hundreds. And so on through the whole list of geniuses that have been brightened by adversity.—Selected.

TAKE YE AWAY THE STONE.

JESUS, standing at the tomb of Lazarus, refused to work a miracle until the friends of the dead man had done their part. "Take ye away the stone," said he. He might have moved it by a motion of his hand, or by a thought, but this part was theirs to do, and until they did it Christ couldn't work. God will do nothing for me that I can do for myself. My extremity is God's opportunity. God can get no glory by doing for me that which I can do for myself. Why should I sit down and expect God to do my work? If I try and fail, God will either give me strength or do it for me, if it ought to be done.

Many a one is asking God to save some friend, and Jesus says, "Take ye away the stone." What is it? an inconsistent life? a bad habit? a cross disposition? a long tongue? an inconsistent business? Look well and see what boulder in your life obstructs the tomb, and shuts out Christ from your beloved, dead in trespass and sin. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

How many prayers are but insults offered to God! Iniquity cherished in the heart, yet by my prayers asking God to countenance my wicked life. If God should answer the prayer, he must needs set the seal of his approval on my sin. One of the great premiums offered in God's book for a holy life, is the listening ear of God and the promise of a sure and speedy answer to our prayers. "Search me, O God," should be our daily prayer.—Record of Christian Work.

Epitaph of Dr. John Condor

The epitaph of Dr. John Condor, who was born in Cambridgeshire, June 3, 1714, was:—

I have sinned. I have repented. I have trusted. I have loved. I rest. I shall rise. And, through the grace of Christ, However unworthy, I shall reign.

The Sinner and the Savior

By Rutherford

Who is better met and yoked than a sick, dying man and a skillful physician? Who is better yoked than a crying, begging sinner and a rich Christ?—Rutherford.

THE NEEDED PREPARATION.

THE preparation which is most needed today for the conquest of the world for Christ is in the hearts of men and not in the word of God. If Christian men, Christ's hosts in the world, will put their hearts into full sympathy and fellowship with the truths and methods of the gospel, God by his Holy Spirit will sharpen the sword. Take it, O men of God, and slay for Christ!

We have no disparaging words to speak of the most critical and scholarly study of the Bible; but we venture to suggest that, just at the present time, the amount of talk about the Bible is vastly out of proportion to the use that is made of the word in winning men to Christ and the truth. Jesus prayed to his Father concerning his disciples, "Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth;" and Paul exhorted his son Timothy, "Preach the word," not preach about the word. . . . The time is peculiarly a time of battle with all manner of sin; the Christian's weapon is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; and the distinctive, paramount duty of the Christian soldier is to use, and not to sharpen, that sword.—Sabbath Recorder.

EDUCATION AND MOTHERHOOD.

By Ada M. Mellville

EDUCATION is the solution now being offered for many of our national problems, and we are rapidly awaking to the fact that in the great question of social impurity, ignorance is an enormous factor, which must be eliminated if we would cleanse our land of the dread pestilence.

One blessed feature of the civilization of the nineteenth century is that ignorance on the part of parents does not necessitate or in any way predetermine ignorance for the children. When the law of the State does not compel them to attend school, there is a law which says, "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat," and machinery has so taken the place of manual labor that a man or woman without some head learning must need struggle hard for a bare existence, and not infrequently goes under in the fight. Thus the children by the very demand of the case are being forced through the open doors of our public schools. For what are we educating these boys and girls? What part are they going to play in the destiny of the world?

Here is a room of forty or fifty individuals, no two alike in looks, capabilities, or ambition. One will paint and another will preach; this one will keep books, that one will be a commercial king; this one teach, that one wash and scrub. Their paths will diverge, but this one thing is certain, the greater number, if not all of them, will tread the common road of motherhood and fatherhood. How many of them will tread that path as if it were holy ground?

We find charts on physiology and hygiene in infant rooms of our schools. Children in the first and second readers can tell you that alcohol is a poison, lurking in every glass of wine, beer, brandy, and cider. The charts and the instruction grow more complicated as the grade advances.

Lessons in physiology and hygiene have been followed up by practical lessons about narcotics, courses in gymnastics, with occasional experimental instruction in the art of cooking according to the best methods. What shall follow these? What but regular courses of instruction regarding the laws that govern or in any wise affect the birth of man?

The inflexible, inevitable law of heredity must be taught and studied, that it may be fulfilled according to its very highest possibilities. Nothing but education, line upon line and precept upon precept, will ever revolutionize the mode of woman's dress. Head and heart must be educated until our girls, who, in spite of their erring, have true hearts and high ideas, are brave enough to fling the gauntlet in fashion's face, and their corsets, waistbands, and high-heeled shoes at her feet.

If we would have a people strong enough to hold in perfect control the demon of lust, who is to-day driving them to destruction, we must have a people whose bodies are normally healthy. It is the body which lusts, and the body must be cleansed, strengthened, and purified.

What we eat makes considerable difference as to what we are. Some foods and drinks nourish the animal in us, until it becomes strong enough to counteract the voice of the spirit.

Here, then, is another branch for educators to consider. Let the young people be taught to select a bill of fare as they would choose a course of reading, refusing that which is useless, hurtful, or not of the best for building up the finest structure for the soul's dwelling place.

But there are other means of education aside from the halls of learning. What is the press doing for our young people? It is a treat to go into our bookstores to-day and see their shelves and counters filled with beautiful, pure, bright literature, for the child of six and for the sage of sixty, the best within the means of all.

Side by side with the free press is the free platform. Many who cannot be reached by the schools can be reached through the medium of the public speaker, and here is surely a call from God to any who love God's pure cause.

Yes, we must educate. There are a thousand phases of the subject, each one requiring individual attention. Education and Christian aggression must work hand in hand. Men will not always cease from sinning because they are told they are in sin, neither will they put the cup of pleasure from their lips though they know there is poison in it. Every Christian man and woman should study to be an intelligent teacher and counselor on this subject, and every teacher in school or college should work with the Bible in one hand and the textbook in the other.

It is a mighty work God's people have undertaken, that of purifying the world for him, and at first contemplation well-nigh hopeless. But—

"Right is right, since God is God And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin." —Ada M. Mellville.

HOW PEOPLE SLEEP.

Though it be true, as the author of a school composition once asserted, that "sleeping is a universal practice among all nations," it is also true that there is a great diversity in the methods of sleeping among people of different nations and different ways of life. The things which one person needs to make him sleep are precisely the things which would keep another awake all night. Even the sedative medicines which put one person immediately into a heavy slumber excite another into a condition of nervous restlessness.

The European or American in order to sleep well ordinarily requires a downy pillow under the head; but the Japanese, stretching himself upon a rush mat or the floor, puts a hard, square block of wood under his head, and does not sleep well if he does not have it.

The Chinese makes great account of his bed, which is very low indeed—scarcely rising from the floor—but it is often carved exquisitely of wood; but it never occurs to him to make it any softer than rush mats will render it.

While the people of Northern countries cannot sleep unless they have plenty of room to stretch out their legs, the inhabitants of the tropics often curl themselves up like monkeys at the lower angle of a suspended hammock, and sleep soundly in that position.

The robust American often covers himself with a pair of blankets, and throws his window wide open to the air, even in the wintertime, and he does not complain if he finds a little drift of snow across the top of his bed in the morning.

The Russian, on the contrary, likes no sleeping place so well as the top of the big soapstone stove in his domicile. Crawling out of this blistering bed in the morning he likes to take a plunge in a cold stream, even if he has to break through the ice to get into it.

The Laplander crawls, head and all, into a bag made of reindeer skin, and sleeps warm and comfortable within it. The East Indian, at the other end of the world, also has a sleeping bag, but it is more porous than the Laplander's. Its purpose is to keep out mosquitoes more than to keep the sleeper warm.

While the American still clings to his feather pillow, he is steadily discarding his old-fashioned feather bed in favor of the hair or straw mattress. The feather bed is relegated to the country, and many people who sleep upon it all through their childhood find themselves uncomfortable upon it in their maturity.

The Germans not only sleep upon a feather bed, but underneath one. The feather covering used in Germany, however, is not as warm as a mattress, and the foreigner who undertakes to sleep beneath it often finds his feet suffering from cold while his shoulders are suffering from heat.—The Youth's Companion.

A THRILLING GHOST STORY.

WHEN the Hon. Robert Curzon was in Egypt he prevailed on a Coptic carpenter to show him the carefully-concealed library of a ruined Coptic monastery near Thebes. Mr. Curzon was to go alone at night with the carpenter to the tomb where the precious treasure was concealed. The son of the carpenter made the third member of the party.

Stumbling over ruins, among low hills and narrow valleys, the howl of the hyena often in their ears, at last they came to something like a gravel pit, in which was the entrance to an ancient tomb.

Into this tomb, covered with hieroglyphics, they went, and the carpenter produced the books, eight or nine in number, all brown and musty.

With their candles stuck in the ground, Mr. Curzon and the carpenter, who could read both Coptic and Arabic, proceeded to examine the contents of the books.

While poring over them they thought they heard a noise, but the carpenter said: "No one knows of this tomb or of the holy manuscripts it contains. There can be nothing here to make a noise. Are we not here alone, a hundred feet under the earth, in a place where no one comes?"

So they returned to the examination of the books.

Suddenly a roar as of a hundred wild beasts seemed all around them. It ceased, but began again as if legions of infernal spirits were let loose. Mr. Curzon and the carpenter jumped from the ground; the carpenter's son, in his terror, stumbled over the great manuscript, fell upon the candles, and put them out in a moment. His screams were added to the terrible uproar which resounded through the cave.

Seeing a star twinkle through the vista of the two outer chambers, all three ran for their lives, their fright increasing to desperation when they perceived that something was chasing them, while the roar seemed to increase every moment.

No sooner had they reached the open air than the evil one came forth in bodily shape, and stood revealed in the pale light of the newly risen moon.

"Father," said the carpenter's son, after a moment's silence, "if that is not old Fatima's donkey, which has been lost these two days; it might have starved to death but for our finding it to-night."

Mr. Curzon goes on to say that "on some foundation like this many well-accredited ghost stories may have been founded. The echoes of the subterranean cave so altered the sound of the donkey's bray that I never should have discovered that these fearful sounds had so undignified an origin."—Selected.

The Home Circle.

"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."—Phil. 4:8.

UNCERTAINTY.

By Bret Harte

THE sky is clouded, the rocks are bare! The spray of the tempest is white in air; The winds are out with the waves at play, And I shall not tempt the sea to-day.

The trail is narrow, the wood is dim, The panther clings to the arching limb; And the lion's whelps are abroad at play, And I shall not join the chase to-day.

But the ship sailed safely over the sea, And the hunters came from the chase in glee, And the town that was builded upon a rock, Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock. —Bret Harte.

IS TOBACCO USING SIN?

"DRINKING liquor is sin, but smoking is not." A Christian worker made this assertion one day in conversation about narcotics and stimulants.

Some years ago Dr. Woods, a celebrated physician in the United States, said: "The active or poisonous principle of tobacco is one of the most virulent poisons known, and a drop of it in a state of concentrated solution is sufficient to destroy a dog, and birds perish as they approach a tub containing it."

Wandering over to France and searching into records of wisdom, we find M. Joly, in addressing the Academy of Science, gives this terrible warning: "The increase of lunacy keeps pace with the increase in the revenue of tobacco, and the immoderate use of the pipe produces a weakness of the brain and the spinal marrow, which causes madness."

Coming home to Canada we listen with marked attention to Mrs. Elizabeth Bradley, of England, as she gives her evidence before the Ontario Prison Reform Commissioners in Hamilton: "My own conviction is that the use of tobacco has a terribly demoralizing effect, far more so than is generally understood. Some young ladies were engaged in rescuing the daughters of professional men, and there came under their attention the daughter of a clergyman that was in connection with our work in London, England. There seemed here to be such a positive tendency to vice that we thought there was some other cause than the apparent temptation to which she was subjected. On inquiring we found that there had been great degeneracy in her ancestry. Her grandfather and father had been inveterate smokers. We set physicians to study this. My own conviction is that girls and boys who have come from a stock of this kind have a predilection to sensual vice. They are weak in that direction, and the result is a terrible increase in vice of this kind."

I knew one woman who taught her children to despise smokers and sellers of tobacco. They, in turn, by God's blessing, converted their father to her views. He began preaching to his class in Sabbath school, and one boy said laughingly to another, "Why, our minister smokes; papa has to order the very best brand of tobacco for him."

The words were reported to the teacher, and he went to the minister and laid the matter before him. I am glad to say that that minister decided to give up the habit, although his wife was much opposed to his doing so. She said that his pipe soothed him so much and was such a comfort to her husband, she hated to see him give it up.

Can we still consider it no sin to smoke when we remember how selfish men and boys become who use tobacco, and also the extravagance it incurs, and, lastly, worst of all, ever remember that the use of one narcotic often leads to the use of others? "Tobacco prepares the way for alcohol, alcohol for opium."

Mothers, watch your little boys; examine their mouths and see to it that on their way to and from school they are not learning to smoke by picking up the stumps of cigars they find on the sidewalks. I know of children who are now smokers from this practice. —Woman's Journal, Ottawa, Canada.

THE HEN HAWK DECEIVED.

By Christian Advocate

HERE is an account of how a hen hawk thought he had stolen a fine wood duck, but did not find it very good eating: George Boyd has a collection of birds, stuffed and mounted as natural as life. He was looking them over a few days ago to see that moths were not injuring them, and left one, a fine specimen of a wood duck, standing in his back yard while he carried some others into the house. Just as he was coming out of the door again a hen hawk swooped down, pounced on the stuffed duck, and bore it away in its talons. The hawk lit on the limb of a dead tree a hundred yards from the house, and proceeded to sample his supposed prize. He struck his bill into the duck's breast just once, and then dropped it as if it had been red hot, and took wing at railroad speed away from the place. He didn't stop to do any more hunting around that locality, although he had been circling thereabout for weeks, but kept right on going west until he disappeared in the blue distance, and he hasn't been seen since. But he spoiled the stuffed wood duck.

Health and Temperance.

"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."—1 Cor. 10:31.

A UNIVERSAL CURSE.

By Christian at Work

It is a notable and significant fact that the drink curse has been acknowledged as one of the chief factors in two great evils which now overshadow the civilized world, and that it was also one of the moving causes in a recent event which threatened at one time to plunge two nations into the horrors of war. We refer to the famine in Russia, the ruin and degradation of the natives of Africa, and the quarrel with Chile. In a recent interview with Count Tolstoi, published in the New York World, the Russian philanthropist distinctly mentions drunkenness as one of three things which have led to the present distress. The other two things are improvidence and despair.

The Russian correspondent of the New York Times, and others who have investigated the famine districts, bear testimony to the same facts. The terrible vodka, the Russian drink, is at the bottom of a large part of the misery. As for what rum is doing for the natives of Africa, all the world knows the shameful story. We are rightfully indignant at the hideous cruelties practiced by the Arab slave dealers in carrying on their traffic among the poor negroes of the Dark Continent, but it may be doubted whether the rum imported from Christian nations, and largely from our own country, has not been, in recent years, as heavy a curse upon these heathen people as the Arab slave trade.

Slavery may have affected a much larger number of people, but it is not an evil that takes hold of the blood. Rum not only curses those who drink, to-day, but it reaches out with deadly and paralyzing grasp upon future generations. We may put an end to slavery by force, but bayonets and cannon will not eliminate the rum poison which we have put into the veins of the African negro. And then as to the Chilean quarrel, it is a generally conceded fact that the riot in Valparaiso, which started all the trouble, had its occasion partly, if not chiefly, in the drunken antics of some American sailors.

And so it is all around. Whichever way we turn in our effort to ameliorate the condition of mankind, whether it be in its social, political, or industrial status, we find this drink curse in the way.—Christian at Work.

WHAT RUM WILL DO FOR AN ATHLETE.

By Christian Advocate

"MIKE CUSHING" died early Wednesday morning at the Inebriates' Home, at Eighty-ninth Street and Second Avenue, South Brooklyn, aged twenty-seven years. He was an athlete and a prize fighter. As a boy, he worked at the forge as a horseshoer; but being very strong he was led into fighting, and had more than thirty public conflicts, in which he almost always prevailed. He was at first nearly a teetotaler, but took to hard drinking, and finally attempted to keep saloons at Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay. This broke him down, and "the cause of his death was pneumonia, produced by alcoholism."

From Presidents of the United States through the diversified territory of honorable human activity, and lower, through the descending scale of dishonorable human activity to the prize fighter, rum has shown its power to blast the intellect, paralyze the will, sear the conscience, petrify the heart, rack with pain the body, and quench the spark of life.—Christian Advocate.

CURE FOR COLD IN THE HEAD.

ABOUT all that medicine has been able to do for a cold in the head is to give it a Greek name, "coryza," which comes from two words, signifying "the head" and "to boil." This is not very much, for in spite of the Greek name most of us call it by its common name, "a cold in the head." Dr. Weber thinks he has, however, found a way to cut it short, and it is a simple, harmless one. His treatment consists in touching the entire mucous membrane of the nose from the very beginning of the cold with a brush dipped in glycerine.

The insertion of the brush and the application of the glycerine are disagreeable, but there can be no question of the fact that cold is relieved in a most rapid and effective manner. For this reason we should try to find some way of avoiding the disagreeable sensation caused by the passage of the brush. The best way would be to use absorbent cotton, made into a little roll, and gently passed into the nasal fossæ, after having been dipped in glycerine.—Jenness Miller Illustrated.

LEPROSY IN RUSSIA.

Miss Marsden, who has recently been traveling in Siberia with some official assistance, to investigate the extent of leprosy in Siberian Russia, makes a report of which the following is the substance: Leprosy exists as a disease in a district extending over several thousand versts. No provision whatever is made for the care of the sufferers. As soon as the disease declares itself, the victim is driven into the forests, and never allowed to come again into contact with his fellow-creatures. A number of wretched huts have been half built, half excavated from the ground, and in these shelters the lepers must live without any clothing except a few miserable old sheepskins, all through the rigors of a Siberian winter, and the tropical heat of the summer. These huts are always in the most distant parts of the forests, and are hundreds of versts apart. The main food of the lepers is the bark of trees, and small quantities of rotten fish which their relatives from time to time deposit for them at a short distance from the huts. Many were blind, and some insane. Some of them have lived in this state for twenty years. It is Miss Marsden's intention to return to Yakutsk, and to establish a leprosy colony at Valuisk, on the river Velui. On her return to Moscow her report excited so much interest that a Russian princess, in one of the convents there, with five Russian Red Cross Sisters, volunteered to serve in the leprosy-stricken district.—British Medical Journal.

GOOD NEWS FROM CHINA.

The following collation of interesting incidents is from the pen of a Chinese Christian named Jee Gam, and appears in the October issue of the American Missionary, organ of the American Missionary Society:—

Our beloved brother, Mr. Joe Jet, evangelist of our Chinese Missionary Society, has returned from China. He brings glowing accounts from the field of our missionary society. The following are a few of the many incidents which occurred during the two years of his labor:—

Joe Jet and his coworkers, consisting of a physician and an assistant and a colporter, have received many invitations to preach and to give medical treatment among the villages of South China. Most of these meetings were held in ancestral halls. In former years this privilege could not be had under any circumstances. Furthermore, they were given the use of a large temple where there were many idols, the principal one being Tong Kew Foo Yen, words which mean "pine tree, ninth month, honorable lady." Tradition says that many years ago there was a very good woman who happened to die by a large pine tree. Her spirit became a goddess. Accordingly this tree was cut down, a log of its trunk was made into an image, and in the same spot this temple was built.

Over eight hundred people came from the surrounding villages to this temple to receive medical treatment, and more than one thousand people heard the word of God there. Many of the hearers have shown gratitude for our work. The keeper of the temple frankly confessed, when questioned by Joe Jet, that the idol was simply a block of wood, and therefore it had no spirit. May the Lord water the seed sown in this temple.

Another time a boy of fifteen years of age was brought to the dispensary to be treated by our physician, but on the following day he died, or apparently died. The parents and relatives of the lad came and openly accused our physician of having poisoned the boy. They demanded that he should go with them, and bring the boy to life again. The doctor asked them to produce the prescription given by him.

Upon examination he found that the medicine could not cause the death of the youth. So he went with them, praying as he went, most earnestly in his heart, for God's mercy and help. The Lord heard his prayer. When he arrived, the crowd greeted him with all manner of threats. "If you don't restore this boy's life, we will bind you;" another said, "We will whip you to death;" others said, "We will tie you with a rope, and send you to the magistrate, and have you beheaded."

The doctor paid no attention to these threats. Though he found the boy, to all appearances, dead, yet he trusted God and applied the medicine that he had brought, to the boy's nostrils two or three times. He called aloud to him. The boy sneezed and rose again. The doctor asked him whether or not it was his medicine that caused his unconsciousness. He exclaimed: "No, you are blameless. Your medicine has done me good; but my mother is not good. I cannot endure her longer, so I have taken opium in order to commit suicide."

After this explanation he lay down, and slowly sank away and died. The crowd and the parents were dumb with confusion. The doctor made a few remarks, slightly reproved them for their false charges, which made them very ashamed, also said that he was very sorry for the boy, but he could not do anything, as his medicine was far from that place, and therefore he bade the people good-by. Was not this a most remarkable manifestation of God's grace? Behold how he protected his servant in the hour of great danger!

Last summer, when Joe Jet and Jee Chong Ting, the assistant preacher, were making their visits among the Christian brethren from place to place, they observed a man, an entire stranger to them, crossing the road in front of them. A man behind them, also a stranger, called out, "Yasou doe." No reply was made, and he called again, "Yasou doe, why don't you preach Jesus?" The man thus addressed as a "Jesus man" still made no reply to the remark, so Joe Jet and Chong Ting thought the call was meant for them; but, turning around, they were convinced that it was for the man on the crossing. Joe Jet said to Chong Ting: "This man must be a Christian, and we do not know it. The Lord uses this man's mouth to reveal him to us; so let us speak to him." They introduced themselves to him, and found he was a Presbyterian brother from Los Angeles, Cal., but he had not been to the chapel services. He was not known to the new Presbyterian missionary stationed at San Ning City. Accordingly, Joe Jet spoke to him like a brother and warmly invited him to attend the meeting. He not only consented, but felt stimulated and thankful to God for this strange way of meeting between Christian brethren. This incident reminded Joe Jet of the saying of the Lord Jesus: "There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known."

Last year, during the outrages in North China, some of the people in San Ning City took occasion to excite quite a mob, and wished to tear down our chapel. Joe Jet and Chong Ting reported this to the authorities of the city. They at once issued a proclamation, stating that the missionaries were good people, and the doctrine they teach is also a good one. They and their property must not be interfered with, and a heavy penalty was threatened to all violators. A copy of the edict that was issued from the emperor, was also hung up in the inside of our chapel. When the people saw these they went away, and said the Emperor and the authorities were all on the Christians' side. Thus quietness was again restored.

Leu Haw Hing, formerly a Methodist preacher from California, was preaching one day to a professor of high rank in the college of his native village. When he was about half through, Haw Hing's uncle came in, and walked up to him, and snatched the Bible away from his hand, and threw it into the gutter. The book was badly damaged, but Haw Hing kept cool, and, without saying a word, or demanding the reasons, walked to the gutter and picked up the Bible, and wiped it with his handkerchief. He came back to the professor and resumed his preaching as though nothing had happened. This set the professor in profound thought for two days. He said within himself, "If Christianity make a man so meek and true, that is the doctrine I want." So he accepted Christ, and gave up his Chinese college at the end of that year. In the following year he became a professor in a Christian college at Canton City, and has held that position ever since. He is highly respected, and is doing a grand work for Jesus. Thank God for Leu Haw Hing's meekness and patience in leading such a man to Jesus.

Mission Fields.

"Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it after many days."—Eccl. 11:1.

A LEPER'S DEVOTION.

By London Christian

On September 4, in the city of Almora, North India, there died a man who for many years accomplished a wonderful amount of good and held a position unique in the annals of missionary work. He was a native Indian, named Musua, and was a leper. Nearly fifty years ago he was befriended by an Englishman, and at the time of the opening of the present Lepers' Asylum at Almora, he was admitted as one of the members. From that time to this he has suffered constantly from the ravages of the disease, and for twenty-four years has been blind. He was early converted, and from that time he has been one of the most faithful and earnest workers among his afflicted associates. Although sightless, he was always cheerful, and seemed fully conscious of all that was going on around him, and it was a real pleasure to converse with him. He was full of gladness and spiritual joy, and his popularity made him by common consent the head of the community in regard to matters affecting them. For some weeks before his death he became feeble, and weary, and helpless, yet never complained, and his influence over the community by his unfaltering faith and consistent Christian life was most powerful.—London Christian.

PROPHETIC LIGHTS.

A Book of 180 Large Octavo Pages, Handsomely Illustrated.

The design of this book is to remove some of the covering that has been thrown over the prophecies of both the Old and New Testaments by tradition and human speculation. The following are the subjects treated:

CHAPTER I . . . Prophecies Concerning the Messiah.

CHAPTER II . . . The Transfiguration.

CHAPTER III . . . The Sure Word.

CHAPTER IV . . . The Testimony of the Centuries.

CHAPTER V . . . The Kingdom of Babylon.

CHAPTER VI . . . The Fall of Babylon.

CHAPTER VII . . . Medo-Persia and Greece.

CHAPTER VIII . . . Rome.

CHAPTER IX . . . The Papacy.

CHAPTER X . . . Christ's Second Coming.

CHAPTER XI . . . The Promises to Israel.

This book throws much light on some of the most interesting and important lines of prophecy.

Printed on heavy, calendered paper, bound in fine English cloth, gilt edges. Very fully illustrated with original wood cuts made especially for this book. Price, $1.00. Paper covers, plain edges, 50 cents. Sent postpaid on receipt of price.

Address, PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING CO. Oakland, Cal. 43 BOND STREET, NEW YORK.

BIBLE ELECTION. By M. C. Wilcox. A brief presentation of God's plan and purpose concerning man, showing that the doctrine of election, or predestination, according to the Bible, is full of comfort and instruction. It throws new light on old controversies. Bible Students' Library, No. 67; 24 pp.; price 3 cents. Address Pacific Press Pub. Co., Oakland, Cal.

ANGELS; THEIR NATURE AND MINISTRY. Contains also some hints on the origin, history, and destiny of Satan as gleaned from the Scriptures. Bible Students' Library, No. 83. Pacific Press Pub. Co., Oakland, Cal. 140 pp.; 20 cents.

Bishop Taylor on African Evangelization

BISHOP TAYLOR, the noted African missionary, was in San Francisco last week. He says the evangelization of Africa is "a pretty large contract." He further stated that it was generally the custom to wait until the native child had reached school age before educating it into the ways of Christian civilization, but he considered that too late to begin.

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