My friend had spoken an impatient word to his little son, and I saw the child's face stained by the hot blood of anger. My friend saw the stain also. What did he do? repent of his impatience and heal the hurt in his child by a gentler word? No; but he grew more impatient, and calling sharply to the boy, said, in a warning tone:
"Take care, sir!"
Take care of what? Why, lest punishment follow.
You ask as to the child's fault that punishment should be threatened. There was no fault. He had, in passing near a table in the room where I sat, talking with his father, accidentally touched a book, lying on the edge, causing it to fall. The noise jarred on the father's sensitive nerves. Naturally irritable he smote the child, as I have said, with an impatient word; and the child's spirit answered to the harsh rebuke in a hot face and flashing eyes.
"Take care, sir!" repeated my friend, seeing that his warning admonition had produced no effect on the boy's roused spirit, smarting under an undeserved blow. The stain grew redder on the cheeks and brow; the eyes more intense; the lips more firmly shut. I saw defiance in the child's face.
"Why don't you pick up that book, sir?" There was no sign of obedience.
"Did you hear me?" almost fiercely demanded the father. I shuddered inwardly, but dared not interfere between my hot-tempered friend, and his equally hot-tempered child. He might as well have spoken to deaf ears.
"Pick up that book, I say!"
The child did not stir.
"I shall not speak again," said my friend, in a suppressed voice. One minute passed in dumb silence; then rising with deliberation he approached the boy, whose face had become pale, but weak or fearful, and grasped one of his arms tightly. Time was still given for him to lift the book; but he was too angry to yield. I held my breath painfully, taking a long inspiration as my friend swept from the room, dragging the boy after him. He was gone for nearly five minutes and then came back flushed, nervous, and excited, saying, as he sat down opposite me,
"I'm out of all heart with that boy."
He looked sadly discouraged. I did not answer. After sitting for a few moments he added.
"Such a temper—such a will! I never saw anything like it!"
But I answered nothing. What could I say in approval of my friend's conduct? My silence was on the side of his own uneasy convictions, and he felt it to be so.
"What am I to do with the child?" he asked, interrogating my unspoken thought. "To give up to him—to let will and passion have their sway—can only end in moral ruin. He must come under the yoke. Is it not so?"
"Obedience is essential," I answered.
"So I think, obedience at all hazards."
I did not assent to this extreme proposition.
"At all hazards," he repeated, with increasing force.
"It may be well," said I, "to look at the conditions of obedience, before exacting the full measure of obligation."
"I am not sure that I understood you," answered my friend, with a slightly puzzled air.
"Obedience may be impossible."
"Was it impossible for John to lift that book from the floor?"
"Perhaps," I said.
"Perhaps!" My friend looked astonished. "Morally impossible, I mean."
He shook his head doubtfully.
"A condition may render the easiest act so difficult of performance that a man will look death in the face and yet not lift a hand in attempted execution. The act, in this case, becomes morally impossible."
"I do not see how you will apply that to my boy's case."
"Suppose," said I, "you were riding in one of our street cars, and a passenger, on entering, and before you had time to make room for him, were to order you in a rough, imperative manner, to move; what would be the result?"
"I would sit still in my place," answered my friend.
"And yet it would be the wiser course to give way, and not be disturbed by ungentlemanly rudeness."
"Perhaps it would; but I have that in me which will not submit to unjust encroachment. And I am quick in my resentment, as you know. To a gentlemanly demeanor I yield everything that is right; to rude exaction, nothing."
"Therefore it is that the condition of a demand may render obedience a moral impossibility."
"It is so," answered my friend.
"Has it not often happened," I continued, "that under a momentary, blind excitement, you have said or done things for which you were sorry, and yet, having done or said them, would not recede—growing more persistent, in the degree that you were assailed by angry efforts to drive you from the position taken, although, in your heart, you knew that you were wrong?"
I understood my friend's character, and knew its weak side.
"It is as you say," was his answer. "I can be led easily; but all the world cannot drive me—no, not even to do what is right."
"Has it never occurred to you," I asked, after a pause, "that your son is like you, in this respect?"
I saw a quick change in my friend's countenance. The question had taken him unawares. A sudden light had streamed into an obscure corner of his mind.
"Like me?" His tone was that of a man just awaking, and in surprise at some unexpected sight.
"Is it strange that he should be like you?" I queried.
"Perhaps not. I am his father." The surprise had already gone out of his voice, which had in it a shade of depression.
"'Like father, like son.' The adage is as much founded on immutable law as upon observation. In homelier phrase, you have 'chip of the old block.' John's disposition is very much like your own, my friend. He is quick-tempered, strong-willed, independent, and instinctively opposed to coercion—easily led, hard to be driven. Have you never thought of this? never looked down into the clear mirror of his unsullied character, and seen a perfect image of yourself?"
My friend dropped his head upon his bosom, and sat a long time silent.
"The father," I said, as he sat musing, "reproduces himself in his children with such modifications as the mother's life may give. I need not offer arguments to prove the fact, every man of rational perception sees that it must be so under the unvarying law of like producing like."
"I have no doubt of its being so," he replied.
"Does not the fact instruct us?" I went on. "Does it not throw light upon that most difficult, yet most important of all our duties, the government of our children? First, we must know the quality, condition, and capability of any material upon which we are to work. The plumber would fail in his effort to produce a useful result if he wrought with wood in place of lead; and so of the gold-beater, if, instead of the most ductile of all metals he subjected iron to his hammer-strokes. As in the lower world of nature, different forms require different modes of treatment, in order to eliminate their proper use, so in the higher world of mind, all objective differences are but images of mental differences. Mind is the true world, nature the representative and effect, and, as such, our instructor, if we will open our hearts to her teachings.
"I do not gainsay this," returned my friend. "I believe it is so. I comprehend the important truth you have stated, that my child bears a likeness to his father. But what I do not see clearly is, the way in which I am to deal with him. How am I to correct, in my boy, the perversities which he has, by inheritance, from his father?"
"The first thing," I answered, "is for you to pity him—to think compassionately of him, burdened as he is, for life, with a hasty temper and a stubborn will."
I saw moisture come into my friend's eyes; the firm mouth gave way a little.
"May I refer to the scene that passed here a little while ago?" I asked.
"Speak freely," returned my friend.
"John committed no fault."
There was a slight motion of surprise in my friend's face.
"Accidentally he touched a book, and it fell upon the floor—this, and only this."
"He was careless," said my friend, with a slight effort at self-justification.
"You, or I, or any one, might have done the same thing. Nay, every day of our lives, we do just as careless things. When the mind is absorbed, we cannot always guard our movements. Now put yourself in John's place. Imagine the book touched without intention, and it falls upon the floor, and imagine as sharp a word spoken to you as you spoke to him—what state of mind would have resulted?"
I paused for his answer, but he did not reply.
"Could you have helped the rush of angry waves? Hurt pride—a sense of wrong—blind impulse—would have made you as stubborn as you saw him."
"Perhaps it would." My friend's eyes were on the floor. He spoke in a subdued voice.
"You cannot overcome the mind's defects by external force," I added. "There must be a wise appliance of moral means. Deal by him as you would yourself be dealt by in like circumstances. Cure his disease by the remedies that reason tells you would heal your own. Weaken his angry willfulness by removing excitement. Control yourself in his presence—hold back your quick springing impulses—never let him see you angry, nor find you unjust or unreasonable. Always speak mildly and kindly, except when in grave rebuke or remonstrance for unmistakable faults, self-acknowledged. Help him, with his load of hereditary evil tendencies, instead of adding a part of your own burden to the weak shoulders of a child. If you cannot control yourself, with reason, judgment, years, and experience, on your side, what can you expect from him?"
I stopped, lest I were pressing home upon him too closely.
Just at this moment the door opened, and the child came in. The book still lay where it had fallen from the table. I turned and saw the little fellow's questioning eyes upon his father's face. There was a look of grief about his lips. Nothing was said to him; in fact, no notice, apparently, taken of him. My friend changed the conversation to a new theme. John stole softly across the room, and sat down noiselessly, taking, as he did so, a long, sighing breath. Presently he slipped from his chair, and moving quietly to where the book lay on the floor, lifted and placed it on the table, pushing it to some distance from the edge; in this very act, showing his recognition of the fault for which he had been harshly blamed as only an accident, against the recurrence of which he would guard by placing the book where it would be in no danger of falling. I noticed another deep breath as the child's burdened heart sought to relieve the pressure that still lay heavily upon it. Then he began, by slow approaches, to draw near his father, and at last stood by his knee. My friend placed his arm around him, as he still talked with me, and tightened it with a loving pressure, made stronger by pity and repentance. John looked up into his face; and then his father bent down and kissed him. Reconciled: yet, as there had been wrong and suffering, and the graver of memory cuts deepest when feeling is most intense, was not something lost in that brief struggle between father and child which could never be restored? something hurt, the pain of which would endure through natural life?
These are questions for sober thought.
My friend, with all his infirmities of temper, had a strong love for his children, a quick moral sense, a love of right and justice. These were all on the side of a truer self-discipline as affecting the little ones given to him of God, that they might be trained for Heaven. I saw him afterward, under stronger provocation; and he did not forget himself. My presence may have revived in his memory the scene just described, and so put him on his guard. Even if that were so, much was gained; for all right efforts give a measure of strength, and erect barriers against evil. We overcome what is wrong in our natural tempers by resisting the impulse to act in the moment of provocation; not by repenting and resolving only. The repentance and the resolution are all well enough, and give strength for resistance against the hour of temptation; but only in the degree that we resist and refrain in the hour of trial, do we overcome and rise superior to our enemies.—T. S. Arthur.
The Journal of the Disciple of Satan
The Journal of the Disciple of Satan, is the title of a paper which has appeared at Palermo, Sicily. The young Men's Free Thinking Association of that city, hailed its appearance in the following terms: "We salute the birth of a paper which bears the name of the true god, the god of science, liberty and progress, the god we worship—Satan."
Bad Air vs. Religion.
Many a farmer and housekeeper wonders why it is that they must need take a nap every Sabbath in sermon time. When the parson gets comfortably into the second or third head of his discourse, and his congregation have settled into the easiest position to listen, gentle sleep begins to steal over their faculties, and the good man is surprised at finding his argument less cogent than it seemed when prepared in the solitude of his study. At home, the busy matron never thinks of eleven o'clock in the morning, and the man of business would consider his sanity or common sense sadly called in question, should a friend propose a half hour's nap at that hour of the day. Nevertheless, they both sleep like kittens, in their pews, and logic, rhetoric, eloquence, are alike wasted in the vain attempt to rouse their sluggish souls. The question of the poet, so often sung in our assemblies,
“My drowsy powers, why sleep ye so!”
is exactly in point, and we propose as an answer, “Because we are all breathing carbonic acid gas—deadly poison; because the sexton didn't let the foul air of last Sunday's congregation out of the doors and windows, and let the fresh, pure air of heaven in.”
Look around at the audience; that feverish flush isn't heat, it is poison. The lady nodding over there, her nose and cheeks like a scarlet rose, is not too warm, for the thermometer doesn't stand over 70 degrees; she is partially suffocating; what she wants is fresh air. The hard-working mechanic and farmer doesn't sleep because he watched with a sick child last night, but simply for want of oxygen to keep the flame of intellectual and physical activity brightly burning.
Nobody can rise on wings of faith in a poisonous atmosphere. Oxygen and religion cannot be separated in this unrighteous manner. We cannot live in conformity to spiritual laws while in open violation of the physical.
Is your sexton a man of intelligence sufficient to understand the necessity and reason of ample ventilation? Does he know that every human being vitiates, at the least estimate, four cubic feet of air every minute? Linger when the congregation leaves, and see if he shuts every door and window tight, to keep in all the heat till evening service; then see how thin the lamps burn in the vitiated air; how hard the minister tries to raise himself and listeners to the hight of some argument, and how stupid they are—nothing but bad air.
Now for the remedy, which costs labor and money; for ventilation is a question of dollars and cents. Saturday the sexton should be instructed to open all the doors and windows, to let out all the dead and foul air, and let in such as is fresh. It takes no more coal on Sunday morning to heat the church to seventy degrees because of this purification. Sunday noon, let the opening of the church be again thrown wide—warmth and bad air will alike disappear, and though extra coal may be required to raise the temperature, the minister will preach so much better in consequence, and the hearers will listen with such increased relish to the sacred word, that the loss of the pocket will be infinitely compensated by the gain of the soul.—Educational Monthly.
The Right Sort of Religion.
WE want a religion that goes into the family and keeps the husband from being spiteful when dinner is late—keeps the wife from fretting when the husband tracks the newly washed floor with his muddy boots, and makes the husband mindful of the scraper and doormat; keeps the mother patient when the baby is cross, and keeps the baby pleasant; amuses the children as well as instructs them; wins as well as governs; projects the honeymoon into the harvest moon; and makes the happy hours like the eastern fig tree, bearing in its bosom at once the beauty of the tender blossom and the glory of the ripening fruit. We want a religion that bears heavily, not merely on the "exceeding sinfulness of sin," but on the exceeding rascality of lying and stealing; a religion that banishes small measures from the counters, small baskets from stalls, pebbles from the cotton bags, clay from paper, sand from sugar, chiccory from coffee, annoto from butter, beet juice from vinegar, alum from bread, strychnine from wine, water from milk cans, and buttons from the contribution box. The religion that is to save the world will not put all the big strawberries at the top, and all the bad ones at the bottom. It will not offer more baskets of foreign wine than the vineyards ever produced bottles, and more barrels of Genesee flour than all the wheatfields of New York grow, and all her mills grind. It will not make one-half a pair of shoes of good leather and the other of poor leather, so that the first shall redound to the maker's credit, and the second to his cash.
It will not put Jouvin's stamp on Jenkin's kid gloves, nor make Paris bonnets in the back room of a Boston milliner's shop, nor let a piece of velvet that professes to measure twelve yards come to an untimely end in the tenth, or a spool of sewing silk that vouches for twenty yards, be nipped in the bud at fourteen and a half, nor the cotton thread spool break to the yard-stick fifty of the two hundred yards of promise that was given to the eye, nor yard wide cloth measure less than thirty-six inches from selvage to selvage, nor all wool delaines and all linen handkerchiefs be amalgamized with clandestine cotton, nor coats made of woolen rags pressed together be sold to the unsuspecting public for legal broadcloth. It does not put bricks at five dollars a thousand into chimneys it contracted to build of seven-dollar materials, nor smuggle white pine floors that have paid for hard pine, nor leave yawning cracks in closets where boards ought to join, nor daub ceilings that ought to be smoothly plastered, nor make window blinds of slats that cannot stand the wind, and paint that cannot stand the sun, and fastenings that may be looked at, but are on no account to be touched. The religion that is to sanctify the world pays its debts. It does not consider that forty cents returned for one hundred cents given is according to the gospel, though it may be according to the law. It looks upon a man who has failed in trade, and who continues to live in luxury, as a thief. It looks upon a man who promises to pay fifty dollars on demand with interest, and who neglects to pay it on demand, with or without interest, as a liar.
Height of the New Jerusalem.
"And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth; and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the heighth of it are equal." Rev. 21:16.
It has been inferred from the above text that the New Jerusalem city is to be as high as it is long, and that its length will be twelve thousand furlongs, or fifteen hundred miles. It seems to us entirely unnecessary to place such a construction upon the language. The word equal does not always mean the same as to dimensions or position; it is frequently used in the sense of proportion. If we were to say that the length and the breadth and the height of the city were in proportion we should not violate the language. This view is taken of the text by Jas. Du Pui, A. M., in his "Exposition of the Apocalypse." The following from Thomas Wicks, author of Lectures on the Apocalypse, presents the same idea: "The language, however, will bear another meaning, which is far more natural. It is not that the length and breadth and height were severally equal to each other, but equal with themselves; that is, the length was everywhere the same, and the breadth everywhere the same, and the height the same. It was perfect and symmetrical in all its proportions. This is confirmed by the fact distinctly stated, that the wall was one hundred and forty-four cubits high, or two hundred and sixteen feet, a proper height for a wall; while it is said that the 'length is as large as the breadth.'"
The Greek word Isos, which is translated equal, will, according to Pickering, bear the meaning of proportion. Greenfield, in defining another form of this word (Isotes), gives to it the sense of "equal proportion," and refers to 2 Corinthians, 8:13, 14, as an example where this definition is quite admissible.
Granville Penn gives quite another turn to the text and claims the following as the true rendering: "And he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth of it are equal. And he measured the height of the wall thereof, a hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of man, that is the angel."
Prof. C. F. Hudson, an eminent scholar, claims that the above is "no rash conjecture," but quite probable.
It would appear, therefore, that the height of the city was proportionate to its length and breadth, and not that it was as high as it was long. The text certainly admits of a more rational interpretation, and the one suggested above frees it from all ambiguity, and shows perfect harmony in the general description.—Millenarian.
Protestantism in Rome
At Rome Protestantism now numbers more than forty chapels or places of worship open every Sunday and several times during the week. A Scripture Reader’s Association has been formed for the purpose of reading the Bible from house to house.
A Question with Only One Answer.
A YOUNG man who was sent to Paris to finish his education, had the misfortune of getting into bad company. He went so far as to say: There is no God—God is only a word. After staying several years in the capital, the young man returned to his family. One day he was invited to a respectable house where there was a numerous company. While all was entertaining themselves with news, pleasure, and business, two girls, aged respectively twelve and thirteen, were seated in a bay window, reading together. The young man approached them and asked:
"What romance are you reading so attentively, my young ladies?"
"We are reading no romance, sir; we are reading the history of God's chosen people."
"You believe, then, that there is a God?"
"And you, sir, do not believe it?"
"Once I believed it; but, after living in Paris, and studying philosophy, mathematics and politics, I am convinced that God is an empty word."
"I, sir, was never in Paris; I have never studied philosophy or mathematics; but since you are so learned and say there is no God, you can easily tell me whence the egg comes?"
"A funny question truly; the egg comes from the hen?"
"And now, sir, whence comes the hen?"
"You know that as well as I do, miss; the hen comes from the egg."
"Which of them existed first; the egg or the hen?"
"I really do not know what you intend with this question, and with your hen; but yet that which existed first was the hen."
"There is a hen, then, which did not come from an egg?"
"Beg pardon, miss, I did not take notice that the egg existed first?"
"There is, then, an egg which did not come from a hen?"
"Oh! if you—beg pardon—that is—you see—"
"I see, sir, that you do not know whether the egg existed before the hen, or the hen before the egg."
"Well, then, I say the hen."
"Very well; there is, then, a hen which did not come from an egg. Tell me, who made this first hen, from which all other hens and eggs came?"
"With your hens and your eggs it seems to you, you take me for a poultry dealer."
"By no means, sir; I only asked you to tell me whence the mother of all hens and eggs came."
"But for what object?"
"Well, since you do not know, you will permit me to tell you. He who created the first hen, or, as you would rather have it, the first egg, is the same who created the world; and this being we call God. You who cannot explain the existence of a hen or an egg without God, still maintain that you are able to explain the existence of this world without God."
The young philosopher was silent; he quietly took his hat, and full of shame departed.—From the French.
The Father's Duty.
By Editor
WE estimate a mother's importance in her family as high as any one; and yet we do not believe that she monopolizes all the qualities needed in the great work of training up human beings. Her familiarity with her children places her, in some respects, at a disadvantage for the exercise of wholesome authority. The wise father will not indeed take the reins of the family government from his wife; but he will make his children feel that her gentle sway is sustained by a firm and steady hand; that behind their mother's tender heart stands a cool judgment, and a will stronger even than their own, and that they cannot impose upon the one nor resist the other. But if he would be truly the father of his family, he must not be a stranger to them. It will answer no purpose for him to come in once in a while to meet some great emergency, and awe down rebellion by hard authority. He must be the companion, the friend of his children. Strong natural love must be the basis of all beneficial discipline. To preserve an affection for and retain companionship with the young, is a sure way for a man to remain always young himself.
But this is also, we had almost said, equally necessary for the father himself. Nothing keeps the heart so fresh and young, saves it from bitterness and corrosion through the cares, and conflicts, and disappointments of life, as daily enjoyment of a happy home. A man of business, or a scholar, who thus allows himself time for relaxation, and for the play of the domestic affections, will in the course of years have accomplished more, with less wear of mind and body, than one who has been all the time on the stretch, seeking "to catch the nearest way" to wealth or any other object of personal or public good.
Deserted on the Hills.
Rev. Newman Hall delivered a very earnest address to the "unemployed," in the hall of the Boston Young Men's Christian Association on Thanksgiving afternoon, in which he related the following touching story:-
As I was traveling over the mountains of Cumberland some years ago, I heard a lamb bleating. I listened, detained, as I am sure, by a loving Providence. It was a pitiful cry. It seemed to say, "Help me, pity me, save me!"
I started in the direction whence it came. The little thing saw me, and came running to meet me. "Help me, pity me, save me!" It was half starved. I took it up in my arms. I think I talked to it. I saw an old sheep near by, and carried it to her. She would not notice it, and as I walked away, the little creature came tottering after me,-"Help me, pity me, save me!"
I thought, "I cannot leave ye, little one, to perish. I wouldn't mind carrying ye seven miles in my arms; but if I should meet the shepherd, what would he think of me! would he believe me!"
Just then I saw the tall form of a man rising above the top of one of the hills. It was my friend Richardson, the shepherd with whom I passed the night before. I had left some papers at his house, and he had hurried to bring them to me.
I told him about the lamb. "Yes," he said, "sheep will abandon them sometimes at this season of the year, when feed is so scarce. I will take it."
He took the lamb in his arms and held it against his bosom; and as I saw him going away over the hills, I could but think of the great Shepherd, who carries "the lambs in his bosom." And I thought if I, a sinful man, pity a little creature God has made, with how much greater tenderness will he pity us, who is the father of us all. Do you think that when the weakest of you cry to Jesus, "Help me, pity me, save me!" he will refuse to listen?. Never.
Two years afterward, I visited friend Richardson, the shepherd, and asked him what became of the little lamb.
"Why," said he, "it is now the finest of the flock."
"So may the feeblest soul that cries to Heaven for help be strengthened by grace, and become the noblest and most useful in the flock of God."
After the telling of this story the whole audience rose and sung,-
"Jesus like a shepherd leads us."
The Table and the Altar.
Was there ever a period when such pains were taken as now with what we should eat and drink? Was there a date, even in the luxurious days of imperial Rome, when cooks commanded a better salary than clergymen, and more money was spent for liquor than all the machinery of government? Look at any of our great hotels, or well-established private mansions. What is the central spot to which the greatest care and expense are devoted? Evidently the dining room. No corner of the earth but is ransacked to find additional delicacies for the appetite. What vastly more attention is given to the stomach than the brain!
Again. In the real centers of business, our homes, what is the great subject of thought? Marriage. A British writer states that the one object in the households of England is the eligible settlement of the sons and daughters at the hymeneal altar—this he declares to be the pivotal point of ambition and labor. Is it different here? And then look at our newspapers. The leading events of the day, with which every journal is full, of which the slightest particulars are conned with eagerness, are the marriages of Victoria’s son and of our President’s daughter. What crowds, what magnificence, what costly presents!
Would it be wrong to say that the two foci of our social system to-day are the table and the altar? But if so, does it not recall to the Christian mind the startling fact that this very state of things is mentioned by the Saviour, as premonitions of his Second Advent? Hear what he says:—
"As in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be."
Brethren, let us be ready.—Church Union.
Illinois Liquor Law
The new liquor law of Illinois, which went into effect July 1st, prohibits the granting of a license to any saloon within two miles of the limits of any city, and allows the majority of the people of a township to determine whether a license shall be granted.
Our Fast Age.
By Editor
UNDER the caption of “Our Fast Age,” the Oakland Daily Transcript, of the 19th, well says:—
“The greed of gain; the passion for wealth; the eager and all-absorbing rush after riches, is sapping up all the generous and pure feelings of our natures, as a race. We can’t find time either to be comfortable or happy. Especially is this the case with Americans, and more especially is this applicable to the people of the Western Coast. If riches did but add one drop of happiness to the cup of life, then we might; with some reason pursue them. But the experience of the world has been, that riches add but care and bitterness to life, especially so when that is the main object of life, to the shutting out of all that is good, and pure, and noble beside. Our very civilization has become a mercenary engine, polluting our society in all its ramifications. Merchandise is made of religion; salvation is bought and sold for a price; and toll is exacted at the very gate of Heaven. The people of this fast age cannot stop to do a good deed; our lives are made tread-mills of drudgery and feverish excitement; the days are all too short, and the nights too long for our slavish work; like Bunyan’s man with the muck-rake, we see not the crown of happiness within our reach; but with eyes and soul intent upon raking together riches, which are but muck and straw compared to the higher life for which we were created—our heads become frosted and our forms bent with immature age, and the fruits of life, like the fruits of the Dead Sea, crumble to ashes in our grasp. We live too fast; the years come and go like the weaver’s shuttle, because we have no time to enjoy the days as they are passing. The mania for wealth has filled our land with fraud, corruption, and dishonesty, public thieving and wholesale robbery, until we know not whom to trust. The mania for riches is filling our insane asylums with crazed unfortunates; and peopling our grave yards with victims of self-murder. It has become a disease; a plague! Let us stop for just one short moment and reason together! Put on the brakes and slow up in this down grade to misery and perdition! Life is too short to be thus squandered, you can take nothing with you when you die. Naked you came into the world, and naked you must return. Then why not make the life worth living for; and the world happier and better that you have lived.”
THIS WEEK'S PAPER.
By Editor
THERE is not, probably, a more instructive and important chapter in the Bible than the seventh of Daniel. A brief exposition of this chapter occupies the first page and part of the second. The period of overwhelming interest to which this line of prophecy leads is the inauguration of the King of kings, the judgment, and the reward of all the just. Let the reader, as he travels past the several monuments which mark the way to the city of God, carefully consider his relative nearness to the last great judgment, and the glory of Christ and his people.
The subject of the "Ministrations of Angels" is one that enters very largely into sacred history. Its history is the history of the Bible. And we suggest that holy angels are always present to minister in connection with the work of the Spirit upon the mind and heart. Elder Canright is invited to continue this subject for the SIGNS.
It is with pleasure that we learn of the interest of the citizens of Battle Creek, Michigan, upon the subject of temperance. Since the report of the Battle Creek Daily Journal, copied on page 35, was in type, we learn that Mrs. White has, by request of leading citizens, spoken in the City Park to an attentive audience of about one thousand. Temperance is the foundation of moral and religious character. Intemperance blasts the hopes of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
"Moses Like Christ, or the Jewish and Christian ages not Contrasted," is a subject of intense interest to those who regard the law and the Gospel as running parallel in the ages of human probation. We propose to continue this subject, and show a harmony of Bible expression with the positions taken. Suggestions from those who have studied the subject will be greatfully received.
We are very glad to give in this paper the law regulating the mailing of papers, and more fully stating our plans and wishes, that our friends may better understand how to co-operate with us.
Mrs. White will continue her articles which will be regarded as rich in thought upon the great subject of salvation through Jesus Christ.
And we are happy to give a better variety of valuable articles from the pens of Elders Loughborough, Canright, Cornell, and Cottrell.
Our Future.
By Editor
UNTIL about the first of November the SIGNS will be issued only occasionally. We leave Oakland the 29th to attend the Eastern Camp Meetings, and design to attend the California Camp Meeting before we return to the Office.
It becomes our duty to fully lay before our Eastern brethren what we have done, and our future plans in conducting the SIGNS. They have taken so deep an interest in the publication of the SIGNS, which is designed for very extensive circulation, that they should be consulted relative to it.
Cause in California.
By Editor
WE are receiving cheering accounts of good quarterly meetings at different points among the churches in the absence of ministerial labor. Our people in this city have fitted a hall for meetings. We have spoken to them the past two Sabbaths with freedom. One of the California tents is at San Jose; Elders Canright and Cornell speakers; the other Elder Loughborough has at Vallejo. Both have good and attentive congregations. Our people are all looking forward with hope to the Camp Meeting which will probably be held October 2–12.
Escape from Fire.
By Editor
On the evening of the 4th of this month a fire was discovered in the SIGNS Office building. The fire was subdued, but while the engines were at work at a fire in Brooklyn, it again broke out. By the use of pails it was held in check until the engine reached the spot and extinguished it. By the efforts of friends not a dollar's worth of material was injured, although the fire was above us and to one side of us.
Especial thanks are due to Mr. Jas. Booth, Business Manager of the Transcript, who saved our type from being indiscriminately dumped from the cases and galleys into boxes and carried into the streets.
North Pacific Mission.
Elder Van Horn reports a good state of things at Walla Walla. His last report made the 8th, say:—
“We can see that the cause of truth is moving on with us here. We are having quite a sharp contest with the ministers of the place. They do not offer to debate. But in their own places of worship they hold forth against us on the questions of the Sabbath, the nature of man, and the second advent of Christ. We have replied to them in the tent. The truth has lost no friends by the contest so far.
“Two of the ministers have now closed up, and have given out publicly that they will carry it no farther. The Methodist minister will probably close up next Sunday. We have many warm friends here who have not yet accepted the truth.”
There is still due us of the $1,000 for this mission the sum of $209.57, which we shall be glad to receive from the friends of the cause as they regard it their duty to donate.