p. 16 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 4. (1/27/1909)

Home and Health

Prepared and edited by a competent committee of home-makers and physicians.

“Home and Health” is a household manual containing two thousand recipes and helpful suggestions on the building and care of the home in harmony with sanitary laws, the preservation of health by clean, consistent living, and the home treatment of simpler ailments and diseases by use of natural, rational remedies instead of drugs.

It contains six sections as follows:

The Home: Its Location, Suggestions on Building, Sewerage, Healthful Surroundings, Water Supply, etc.

General Housekeeping, including all the general features of the housekeeper’s work, such as care of the rooms, Laundering, House Cleaning, Fruit Canning, Pests, etc.

Diet.

Care of the Body.

Care and Training of Children.

The Home Treatment of Disease.

The object of this work is twofold:

(1) The prevention of disease by teaching the principles of life and health.

(2) The classification in convenient form for reference of such recipes and items of information as are most needed in the home.

The book contains nearly six hundred pages; is fully illustrated, and bound as follows:

Cloth, marbled edges, $3.00; library style, $4.00; full leather, $5.00. Address this office.

Germany’s Declining Prestige and Absolutism

Maximilian Harden, one of Germany’s fearless editors and publicists, writes to the New York World that German prestige has fallen very low. To use his own words: “A storm rages over the land which will continue to rage until the air is clear, until absolutism is killed. The death-knell of the present system has been sounded. The doom has been uttered of that majesty which clothes itself in clouds. Even conservative men give voice to their regret that the expressions of the Kaiser relating to foreign politics have brought the empire into a critical position. No foreigner can understand this, and it has cost conservatives their hearts’ blood.”

Mr. Harden says that the emperor has aroused the hatred of England and France, through the support of the sultan, and lost the confidence of Turkey by lack of sympathy for the Young Turks; Italy is seriously thinking of breaking the triple alliance; Russia hates Germany as never before; the rising empire of Japan is now jealous, and things are in a broil generally. Mr. Harden, himself a conservative and a great admirer of Bismarck, concludes his article by saying: “Germany finally will enter the list of constitutional countries. We are marching, and if you listen, you can hear in the distance the thunderous tread of our millions of feet.” But it will be a still greater wonder if Germany is not found in the ranks of socialism.

The Cost of Football

If young Christian men and women were to manifest the same enthusiasm in their religious life that is manifested by many of them in the games of football, or baseball, they would be accounted insane. The football season is not ended yet by any means, and the present Rugby game is supposed to be far less brutal than the old Association football; and yet up to November 15, the gridiron warfare between the colleges, high schools, and athletic clubs, has resulted in ten dead and 290 wounded. Two of the players died from spinal injuries, one from paralysis, caused in an open tackle, one from a broken neck, two from concussion of the brain, two from internal injuries, caused by strains and kicks in vital parts, and one player fell dead of heart disease. Collar-bones, cracked wrists and jaws, broken feet and legs, shattered shoulders, torn ligaments and dislocated joints, have been characteristic of fields both East and West. It certainly is an expensive kind of sport, in which it would seem that more common sense and less misdirected energy could be wisely used.

God Rules Even in Discouraging Times

From every quarter the papers of the first of the year come to us heavy with gloom. Even those who try to be cheerful reveal the minor tone. The last to reach us, the London Times, reviews 1908 with no jubilant tone. It has been in many aspects a sad, discouraging year. Yet the Christian should not be discouraged. He should not lose heart. God rules. He controls and permits, and to them that love Him, He will work all things together for good. Rest in Him.

A Wrong Principle.

Religious legislation is to be invariably condemned in the nature of the case. The principle is always wrong; and an evil tree can not bring forth good fruit. In the words of Madison, the fathers of the republic “saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.” Would God that the Legislature of California might see the evil principle in proposed Sunday legislation, and “avoid its consequences by denying the principle.”

Liquor Dealers Are with Them.

While there is no argument in the claim one way or another, while no person would use it either way unless he had a cause to maintain irrespective of truth or logic, still it is worthy of note that while the California Christian Advocate uses as an argument against Seventh-day Adventists the statement that they stand with liquor sellers against the Sunday law, Dr. G. L. Tufts, the present Sunday-law author, presents as his eighth reason why California should have a Sunday law, “Liquor dealers favor Sunday-closing.”

Support Does Not Change Intrinsic Worth

The support of evil men for a good thing may discredit the good thing in the minds of some, but it does not hurt it intrinsically. We may deny that a gold ring is pure, and turn away a buyer, but it does not injure the intrinsic value of the ring. Good men may mistakenly support an evil thing, and their support may give it temporary favor, but their support does not change its intrinsic evil. Men may call powdered strychnin common wheat flour, and it may be believed and purchased, but that will not prevent its deadly effect when it is taken internally.

Bills for Sunday Law Before the California Legislature

By Editor

OUR NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE will deal with THE BILLS FOR SUNDAY LAW NOW BEFORE THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE. You and your neighbors will want to read the paper.

Two Un-American Measures.

There are before the Legislature of California two measures which every lover of religious liberty ought to study candidly, seriously, and so studying he will oppose. The first is Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 2, the title of which is as follows:

“A RESOLUTION PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO ARTICLE XX OF THE CONSTITUTION BY ADDING A NEW SECTION THERETO TO BE KNOWN AS SECTION 21, RELATING TO A DAY OF REST.”

It was introduced by Mr. Grove L. Johnson, of Sacramento, Jan. 8, 1909.

The other is Assembly Bill No. 37. This was also introduced by Mr. Johnson, January 8, and referred to the Committee on Public Morals. The title reads as follows:

AN ACT

TO AMEND THE PENAL CODE BY ADDING A NEW CHAPTER TO TITLE IX OF PART I THEREOF; TO PRESERVE ONE DAY IN THE WEEK AS A DAY OF REST, AND TO PROMOTE HEALTH, MORALS, AND THE PUBLIC WELFARE.”

Both of these will be considered next week.

Sacrifices of the Around-the-World Race

“Current Literature” remarks: “Talk about sacrifices incurred for one’s country or one’s religious faith! What sacrifices will a man not endure to prove his faith in his own muscles and nerves? Lieutenant Koeppen, of the Protos car [one of the around-the-world race automobiles], an army officer with no previous automobile experience, sacrificed his entire fortune and plunged himself into a debt of $10,000 to carry the race through to completion. When he reached Berlin he declared that he had slept in a bed but five nights in the preceding two months. So far as the physical hardships were concerned, the experiences of the Thomas car crew were almost identical.” “Through northern Russia the crews bivouacked upon the open ground much of the time. Ill-fed, tossed over rough ways, improperly rested on the chilled earth,” they kept their wearied bodies to the tasks; and all the sacrifice, and pain, and toil, were literally for nothing but fame, and that perishing with the next successful record-breaking race.

Good Sense and Universally Applicable.—

Referring to a social club’s breaking a Sunday law in Plainfield, N. J., the Christian Advocate of Dec. 10, 1908, says:

“What a club can do on Sunday, the individual thinks himself entitled to do. A union of persons desiring to violate either the letter or the spirit of the law, gives no moral or legal countenance to the action. One of the greatest deceptions of this day is that a body of men have rights that an individual would not have.”

Now that is everlastingly true. Rights inhere in the man, not in the mass. And that is just as true on the other side. No class or body of men, howsoever much in the majority they may be, have a right to coerce the conscience of a single soul, whoever he may be. If a man wishes to keep Sunday, he may. If he wishes to work upon that day, he has the same right. To condemn or persecute him for doing work on Sunday which is proper and legitimate upon all days, is tyranny and intolerance pure and simple.

Panama Canal.—

Very much is being said over the Panama Canal at the present time. Harper’s Weekly tells us that the original estimate of $145,000,000 is now placed at $550,000,000, and that it is now considered, from all the information at hand, that it will cost probably $1,000,000,000 before a ship will pass from sea to sea. The New York Herald says the really vital question is whether it would not be better to drop the canal now and forever. On the other hand the Scientific American thinks that much of the criticism is unjust. Harper’s Weekly suggests that some one like Mr. Harriman who has independent judgment be taken down there and give his ideas of what conditions actually are. December 12, 40 tons of dynamite exploded in the Panama Canal excavation. 120 men were buried under tons of debris. 50 of the crew were found living, but badly mangled. Most of them were Spaniards, the several Americans are among the missing.

Fireproof Village at Mountain Station

The building of a fire-proof village is in progress at Mountain Station between Orange and South Orange, N. J. Six houses are well on the way. They are made of burned clay in the form of hollow blocks; the roofs are either asbestos shingles or slate. Each of the houses has eight or ten rooms; all partitions as well as outside walls are of terra cotta, so that the fire would not spread from room to room. Nor would it burn anything but the inflammable materials in the way of furniture, etc., which might be in the room.

Senator C. Perkins Re-elected

U. S. Senator C. Perkins has been elected by the California Legislature to succeed himself.