p. 15 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 41. (10/20/1909)

Earlier text: Is the World Growing Better?

LIBERTY

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An illustrated, 48-page, quarterly magazine, published as an exponent and advocate of true religious liberty; defending Christianity and the rights of conscience; upholding the Bible as the infallible word of God; recognizing the church and state as ordained of Heaven for specific and distinct purposes, but vigorously protesting against the alliance of the church with the state in the attempt to advance religion and to promote the state.

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Life and Health

A PRACTICAL health journal, published with a view of meeting hygienic needs in every home; teaching how to care for the health and how to preserve life; prescribing simple home treatments to assist nature in throwing off diseases rather than adding more poison by using drugs or unnatural stimulants as remedies: teaching how to avoid disease as far as possible, how to manage in the home when sickness does come, and how to combat the disease by simple remedies which nature provides.

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Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing.

—An exposition of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. It has 218 pages and six chapters: On the Mountainside, The Beatitudes, The Spirituality of the Law, The True Motive in Service, The Lord’s Prayer, Not Judging but Doing. A new edition just printed on fine enameled paper, new type, and reillustrated with 27 beautiful half-tone engravings specially prepared for the book by eminent New York artists. It will be found full of comfort and blessing by all fortunate enough to obtain and read it. A beautiful gift book. In paper covers, 35 cents. Address this office.

The Federation Age

“Men seem to feel, somehow, that the responsibility for corporate transactions is so widely distributed that no one individual carries any definite burden except in the matter of sharing the spoils.”

“What the world needs to-day is not more unions, but more unity; not more brotherhoods, but more brotherhood.”

“Every effort in the way of multiplying federations and unions, without divine uplifting power applied to the heart of each individual, only makes matters worse.”

“The prophet Isaiah long ago struck the key-note of the situation thus: . . . Isa. 8:12, 13.”

“The prophet Habakkuk outlines the only possible outcome of godless federation. He first addresses the money power thus: ‘Who enlargeth his desire . . .

“Of the labor power he adds: ‘Shall not all these take up a parable against him?’ . . . Hab. 2:5-7.”

“Yes, the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. . . . 2 Thess. 1:7, 8.”

“To all those whose lives are in complete union with Christ He will come as a deliverer when all the combinations of wealth and power are staggering on to destruction in the last great strenuous struggle.”

¶ These paragraphs taken from a SINGLE ARTICLE in the October number of the SIGNS MONTHLY suggest something of the clear message it is bearing to those who receive it.

¶ Should you not spend some time in placing it in the hands of every thinking person in your community? Already orders which will place this number in 26,867 homes have been filled. Let us have yours for one hundred, fifty, or whatever number you think you can use. You will feel repaid for the effort. Ask for the “Worker.”

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES MOUNTAIN VIEW, CAL.

THE BOY PUZZLE

By Joseph F. Flint

A Picture Book for Mothers

By Rev. Joseph F. Flint

BUT this book is not written alone for mothers. Every father, in fact all who have an interest in the welfare of the boys of this nation will find a wealth of help and encouragement in this presentation of the boy question. The author goes to the bottom of things and shows very clearly where the trouble lies if your boy or your neighbor's boy goes wrong.

As the hope of this Republic lies in our boys a careful reading of “The Boy Puzzle” will do much to help solve the difficulties that confront us.

217 Pages, beautifully bound in cloth, post-paid, 75 cents.

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A Visit to a Living Volcano

By H. H. Dexter

My visit at Samoa would have been incomplete without seeing the volcano on an adjoining island. On the evening of August 16, my brother and I joined a party of excursionists going from Apia, the capital, to Savaii, an island sixty miles west. Five of us were going to visit the volcano, the rest to spend the day merrymaking.

The steamer left Apia Bay at ten o’clock. At three in the morning many of the passengers were on deck to witness the rare and magnificent sight of a smoking volcano. The heavens were all aglow with the light from the boiling lava. On the coast ten miles below we saw two great lights where the red-hot lava pours into the sea, causing it to boil like a pot, and to send up huge clouds of smoke and steam.

At 7 A.M. we were ashore, and with some effort secured the services of two native guides. Few of the natives consent to accompany tourists to the crater, through fear that some evil may befall them. By eight o’clock we were ready for our ten-mile tramp. At a near-by rivulet our guides filled twelve or more bottles with water; for farther up, the lava has dried up all the streams.

We followed the guides through the bush over a foot-path that was at times almost imperceptible, and often obstructed by fallen trees and large stones. We walked through groves of coconut trees, banana plantations, and patches of the taro plant, until one half of our journey had been covered.

On emerging from the bush, from a hillock we found ourselves suddenly confronted by an awful scene of desolation, which we looked upon with wonder and surprise. Behind us were verdure and fruitfulness; before us was a vast waste of black lava, that had been a few months previously a molten mass. As far as the eye could see, there was the same desolation. Valleys have been filled and hills covered with it. Mighty forests have been laid low. Extensive and valuable cocoa plantations and coconut groves have been buried. The lava has covered fifty square miles of territory—the garden spot of the island is lost forever.

Before undertaking to walk on the sharp, brittle lava, our barefooted guides made sandals for themselves from the husks of matured coconuts. Now began the difficult but interesting part of our journey. It was at first with some apprehension that we walked on the lava, fearing that we would unknowingly step on some that was still hot, and burn our shoes; but our brave guides led the way, and we felt safe in following on. In cooling, the lava has formed very strange and fantastic shapes. These would attract our attention, and elicit expressions of wonder and admiration. We climbed on slowly, the lava crackling and crumbling under our feet.

The lava is not now flowing from the mouth of the crater. When the top of the mountain burst forth, in November, 1903, the lava slowly spread over several square miles of territory; and in the course of months it bored a hole through the side of the crater fifty feet below the edge. Thereafter it began forming a channel for itself, and as the top of the lava hardened, the living lava below gradually lifted the crust, until now there is from fifteen to forty feet of it above the stream. There are times, however, when the subterranean channel is choked, and then the liquid lava fills the great caldron, and runs over, so that the land is covered with layer after layer of this melted rock, iron, and brimstone.

In many places the crust that lay directly over the subterranean stream of liquid fire has been forced up several feet, while in other places it has fallen, thus permitting the heat and the sulphur fumes to escape, crumbling and bleaching the dead lava.

We ventured to the edge of great, funnel-shaped holes, from which issued gusts of sulphur vapors that compelled us to lower our heads to the ground to catch a breath of pure air. I thought of how awful it must have been when fire and brimstone were rained down upon the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And still more awful it will be when the same elements will consume forever all those who refuse to accept God’s overtures of mercy.

At 12: 30 we found ourselves at the ragged edge of the crater, which is of an oblong shape, 75 by 150 feet. Here we beheld the seething, red-hot lava bubbling up from the bowels of the earth. How puny and insignificant we felt in the presence of so mighty a phenomenon—rock and iron red as vermilion, boiling and bubbling furiously, and rushing on to the sea. I thought of the coming great day of the Lord, as described by the apostle Peter, when the earth shall be melted with fervent heat, and when all the works of men shall be burned up.

For some moments we stood dumbfounded at the top of this gigantic caldron, then gave vent to our feelings in surprised acclamations. It is, in fact, an overwhelmingly magnificent spectacle, the remembrance of which will always remain with us. Again and again we went to the edge of this lake of fire and brimstone that welled up and down within the confines of this giant caldron.

Reluctantly we left this thrilling scene, to find a shady spot in the shadow of a great volcano rock that had been thrown from the crater. Here we rested and ate our dinner before undertaking our long return journey.

No lives have been destroyed by this volcano, for the reason that the lava flows slowly, giving warning to the inhabitants to move on. Six villages have been wiped out, rendering homeless 600 natives, to whom land on another island has been given by the government.

H. H. DEXTER.

On Board H. M. S. Aorangi,

Sept. 17, 1909.

The Worth of the Bible

Not only was Diderot right when he said, “No better lessons than those of the Bible can I teach my child;” not only was Franklin right when he said with dying lips, “Young man, my advice to you is that you cultivate an acquaintance with, and a firm belief in, the Holy Scriptures — this is your certain interest;” but even Descartes and Newton were right when they said, “No sciences are better attested than is the religion of the Bible — not even the mathematical.” Nay, One still more illustrious than these great scientists was right when He said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, tho one rose from the dead.” Whoever will take the trouble to go as far as the metaphysics of the senses or of geometry, can find that even their ultimate principles are assailed by no smaller objections and defended by no greater proofs than attach to the Biblical religion.—Preface to “Ad Fidem,” by the Rev. E. F. Burr, D.D.

He Doeth Best

He doeth well, who doeth good To those of his own brotherhood; He doeth better who doth bless The stranger in his wretchedness; Yet best, O! best of all doth he Who helps a fallen enemy.

Child Confidence Outraged

By Mrs. E. M Adams

By Mrs. E. M Adams

CHARLIE has always been “mother’s boy.” He runs to mother with everything. One day he repeats to her some story he has heard at the barber-shop, livery-stable, hotel, or street corner, that shocks and outrages all her womanhood.

What! her boy hearing and repeating such filth! She looks at him in consternation. “Now see here!” she exclaims, “don’t you ever let me hear of your listening to such stuff again! I am ashamed of you!”

All right, madam; that settles it. You will hear no more.

Charlie goes away abashed, half injured, half ashamed, but wholly estranged. Mother will not hear everything now, but—there are others—companions and confidants, who never repulse him, who never hear nor tell too much, who are never ashamed. The golden cord is broken. No more free confidences with mother; no anchor; the boy is adrift on the stormy sea of youthful passion, of which he is ignorant, or has wrong ideas.

As time passes, Charlie has low associates, his health is impaired, his fair name disgraced.

His mother’s heart is broken. Weeping, she prays, “O, why has this blow fallen on me? All my fond hopes dashed down! And I reared him so carefully!”

Poor mother, she did not know.

When Charlie came so confidingly to her with that first unclean story, she was to him the embodiment of all love and all wisdom. Mother might have kept him. Mother might have helped him. Mother might have told him all the clean, sacred, glorious truth, and taught him to win the crown of a pure manhood, to be “a brother of girls,” a respecter and protector of womanhood, who could give at the marriage altar honor for honor, purity for purity, and reverently share with God the divine attribute of fatherhood.

Alas! “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”—Purity Association.

Ignorance Is Sin

AS REGARDS God and His relationship to men, ignorance, where knowledge is possible, is a sin of the first magnitude. When God has kept back nothing, but has revealed Himself in fulness to men; when the Father, who created man, claims him for His child; when the Son has redeemed man in blood and sorrow upon the cross; when the Holy Ghost seeks to enter into man, to sanctify him wholly—if nothing comes of all this, if man merely meets this love and this possibility of knowledge with a vacant stare of indifference, must it not be that a grievous sin is committed against the light!—Waterbury (Conn.) American.

Colds.

By G. H. Heald, M.D. A treatise on the causes, prevention, and cure of colds. White leatherette binding. 58 pages, 25c.

Address this office.

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Instructive and entertaining, clean, wholesome, sensible. It is a character builder, a helper to father and mother. Our Little Friend would plant seed in the joyous life of the children in the Present, that it may bear blessed fruitage in the Harvest of the Future. Respect your child's individuality. Take the paper for him or her. Only 50 cents a year.

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Bibles

Bibles.—Remember that we are headquarters for anything in the Bible line. We shall be pleased to send you our catalog of Bible selections on application. Pacific Press, Mountain View, Cal.

Cooperation Corner

By Editor

Brother T. Godfrey, Richwood, West Virginia, has just made an earnest appeal to us for a club of SIGNS OF THE TIMES to be used in his work in that field.

Through our “Cooperation Corner” we are able to furnish Brother Godfrey with twenty copies of the SIGNS for six months. This is just another example of the good work which can be done through the help of our friends who donate to this fund.

Any donation which you may feel impressed to send for this good work will be gratefully received and carefully used.

Evolution and the Sabbath.

By George McCready Price, B. S. L., No. 198, price, one cent.

“At the end of this first week of time, God instituted the Sabbath as a reminder of the fact that He had made the world in six days of the same length and character as the seventh, or Sabbath.”

This statement is found at the very beginning of this important tract. The author goes on to give scientific reasons why he can not accept evolution, and why he does accept the six-literal-day creative period of the Scriptures. He makes it very clear that the Sabbath is a constant reminder of the facts that the Lord did create all things, and did it in six days, and that He has power to re-create or redeem us as well.

Evolution is really salvation by works. “For,” says one of its leading exponents, “the process of evolution is an advance toward true salvation.” “Hence,” says the author, “the Sabbath is doubly precious to us as moderns, not only as a protest against the papal form of the doctrine of salvation by works, but also as a protest against the doctrine of salvation by the development of evolution, as taught by modern apostate Protestantism.”

This is a tract which deserves careful study and a wide circulation. Address your tract society, or Pacific Press Publishing Assn., Mountain View, Cal.; Portland, Ore.; Regina, Sask., Canada; Kansas City, Mo.

War in South America.

The Cologne Zeitung, a prominent German paper, laments the indifference with which the United States views the situation now developing in South America. It goes on to tell us that the powers of South America are arming themselves with a purpose of engaging in a bloody conflict. Sources of discord are not only numerous, but grow more acute with the passage of each year. Two great South American powers are only waiting until their armies are sufficiently well drilled and disciplined to plunge into a struggle for the final disposition of a problem which has occupied their diplomats for years. Then, too, there is the Pacific question. The Argentine Republic chafes under the boundary rules and believes that she ought to have ports on the Pacific; and the German paper believes that this is likely to embroil Argentina and Chile, notwithstanding their great state of peace. Students of South American affairs, we are told, need not be told that Brazil and Argentina are both striving to place their respective armies upon a footing of preparedness which might well be the envy of a European power. Now it seems that Bolivia has called in German army officers to help her train her recruits.

If all this be true—and we know no reason to doubt it—it only emphasizes once again the predictions made by the prophet Joel 800 years before Christ, “Prepare war, wake up the mighty men.”

Back Numbers

By Editor

Back Numbers.— Back numbers of this twenty-five-week series may be obtained, but we can not say for how long. Now is the time to push for subscriptions. The series, running for six months, is but seventy-five cents.

Failures That Can Not Defeat

By Editor

“Failures That Can Not Defeat.”— A selection with the above heading from the Sunday School Times, was begun on page 14 of our last issue, but by mistake did not end, and therefore no credit was given. We will print the helpful selection entire in the future.

Colossal Swindling

The United States secret service has unearthed, or run to cover, to quite an extent, a national band of fake-race operators who had gathered total plunder to the extent of $500,000, and most of the documentary evidence was found in the trunks of the four fake-race swindlers arrested in San Jose recently. It is one of the biggest swindling schemes ever operated in this country. Its leaders went from city to city selling sure things on fake races, and plucking thousands who wished to get rich quick. They corrupted officials in every town in which they operated. They had a complete and elaborate telegraphic code numbering every field man and every horse. Messages could have gone through the hands of any detective without giving the slightest clue to their meaning. The victim of the gang was not robbed in his own town. They would bring one man from Alaska to Seattle, for instance; another from Michigan to Missouri. They would lure them from home under other catchy proposals, such as a timber investment, or an investment in land. One inspector declared that one would not believe it possible that so many people could be robbed with so little noise or that there were so many people of that kind in the world.

The Great Salvation.

By Editor

This issue of our journal emphasizes the prophetic side of the Bible. It is not a separate, segregated part of the Gospel. It is for this time an integral part of it. Christ it is who gave it to us. He it is who has pointed out the perils of the days through which we are passing. He it is who has appointed the warning message to the world and the time of its giving. Unfaithful are we to the trust of the Gospel if we refuse to give it. These great warnings emphasize the need of a personal Saviour, and unmistakably they point to Jesus Christ our great Sin-offering, our great Example, our Life-giver, our coming King, our only hope. We invite you to come to Him, reader, as the Shelter in the time of storm, the great Rock in a weary land, under whose shadow you may rest, your Saviour from sin and death.

Our Next Issue

By Editor

Is No. 4 of our Special Home Bible Study Series. Its special topic is the Meaning and Character of the Second Coming of Our Lord.

Unquestionably the signs and prophecies considered in this issue point to Christ’s second coming.

What is that coming? Is it an outpouring of His Spirit? Is it in “Christian Science”? Is it Modern Spiritism? Is that coming at death? or at conversion? Is it in Mormonism?

These are important questions. Thousands have decided some of them wrong. How will you decide?

Our next issue will be a Bible study on the Second Coming of Christ.

What That Coming Is

What Is Involved in That Coming

What That Coming Means to Righteous and Wicked

The Manner of His Coming

Of mighty interest this subject should be to every child of God. It is the culminating hope of the ages. Nay, more, it is of tremendous importance to every soul, whether that soul is interested in it or not. How you relate yourself to that Coming One transcends all other questions.

Read and circulate the number.

Refreshing Candor

When Thomas A. Edison was asked the cause of a recent wide-spread magnetic disturbance, he frankly confessed that he was ignorant. “If I only knew,” he repeated again and again. Professor Larkin of Mt. Lowe Observatory, in a recent note in a daily paper, remarked: “I have no conception of the real meaning of the title of this note, ‘Cosmic Expression.’ Really there is more pleasure in writing up subjects of which one is totally ignorant, than upon familiar things imagined to be known. I do not know what cosmic manifestation is. I asked a man two years ago what ‘cosmic manifestation’ is, and he told me that man is the highest manifestation yet made. This has kept me satisfied until now.” And so normal man ought to be the highest manifestation, in this world, of the work of God. Sad to say, he is often the lowest. But the candor is refreshing, and recalls the words of the apostle Paul: “If any man thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth not yet as he ought to know.”

Hurricane Damage on the Gulf Coast

Results of a hurricane, September 20, on the Gulf of Mexico: in New Orleans, five persons dead and damage to plate glass to the amount of $100,000; sugar-cane destroyed, $1,000,000; 200,000 barges of coal sunk in the Mississippi, value, $600,000; 250 lives in all reported lost; damage wide and great.

Chapman-Alexander Mission in Australia

Our esteemed contemporary, The Southern Cross, has gotten out a fine souvenir issue of the Chapman-Alexander mission in Australia, the third edition of which recently came to hand. It has on its illuminated cover portraits of Mr. Chapman and the noted singer Mr. Alexander. The paper describes the methods and work and success of these men and those who accompanied them. Among these helpers were the Rev. F. C. Ottman of New England, and Mr. Frank Dickson of our own little village. Copies of this fine number may be obtained for 32 cents. Address, T. Shaw Fitchett, 376 Swanston St., Melbourne, Victoria.

California Educational Schools and Statistics

Thanks are due to the California Superintendent of Public Instruction, Mr. Edward Hyatt, for a pamphlet containing “Tabular statements showing condition of State Normal Schools, California Polytechnic School, the California Institution for the Deaf and the Blind, High Schools, Primary and Grammar Schools, Kindergarten and Night Schools, 1907-1908.” It is a book of summaries on the state educational work in California, clear and helpful. Presumably it can be obtained by addressing the superintendent at Sacramento.

Hudson-Fulton Celebration

Very great was the Hudson-Fulton celebration in New York and on the Hudson. Such a display was perhaps never before witnessed. The naval parade was fine, and the best marine soldiers of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Holland, and other powers were in the parade. The electric-light display was beyond conception. One billion candle-power, it is estimated, was used in the illuminations.

Appendicitis

Dr. Chas. E. Page, one of Boston’s most widely known physicians, declares that he has followed the records of appendicitis operations ever since the craze started, and says: “I confidently believe that the day is coming when the people will finally realize that appendectomy—cutting off the appendix—is a criminal operation. As for the widely proclaimed benefits and saving of life by operating to cut the appendix, it seems hardly necessary to cite the long list of deaths following the operation.”

A New Alliance.

Despatches inform us that Princess Alexandra of Fife, whose mother is King Edward’s oldest daughter, has been betrothed to Manuel, the boy king of Portugal. It is believed that the marriage alliances between England and Spain and Portugal will make for the peace of Europe.

Eliot’s New Religion

Referring to the omission of the Bible from Dr. Eliot’s “five feet of books,” the Chicago Tribune aptly says: “Now every one knows why Eliot omitted the Bible. He is starting a new religion.”

Gas Explosion Kills 15 Miners

October 3, in Roslyn, Washington, 15 men were reported killed in a gas explosion in a mine.