"No Devil Strings"

Of all the savage blacks who inhabit the Solomon Islands* the Marovo Lagoon tribesmen were once considered the most heathenish, warlike, cannibalistic. At the turn of the last Century, however, Marovo had a Chief of Chiefs named Tatagu who proved to be eminently civilized. Long suspecting that there was nothing in the devil-fear to which the islanders had been addicted, Tatagu led a fishing expedition to sea one day, pointedly neglecting to affix to the prow of his boat a vine or "string" which was supposed to placate the devil, bring a good catch. After three fruitless days the tribesmen were about to rebel, when Tatagu spied a large school of the succulent makasi fish. Returning home in triumph, the Chief of Chiefs learned that a son had been born to him. In accordance with a local custom of naming progeny after the most important event of the moment, Tatagu called his babe Kata Ragoso, meaning "No Devil Strings."

For 13 years Chief Tatagu lived without religion or superstition. Then there set foot on Marovo beach a missionary of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church named Captain G. F. Jones, an old seaman who had sailed, against the advice of the British Government, without an armed guard. Tatagu welcomed Missionary Jones and his white God. Among the first ten pupils in the school which the Adventist mariner established was small Kata Ragoso. This black Christian grew up to succeed his father as Chief of Chiefs, to become an ordained Adventist minister. Kata Ragoso helped the white men convert 5,000 of the islanders, at one time brought all 400 inhabitants of one island to Christ. Kata Ragoso learned how to run a printing press and, with a cousin, made the first translation of the New Testament in the Melanesian language his people speak.

Last year Chief Ragoso left his island for the first time, went to Australia to lecture, learn more about the white man's language and customs. When he returned his wife gave birth to a daughter whom he named Marina after the Duchess of Kent who, he had noticed, was then much in the news. Last week Kata Ragoso. now 34, was striding the streets of San Francisco, his bushy hair blowing, his small white teeth gleaming, his sturdy black legs and large black feet entirely bare beneath the dark-blue serge skirt, of tivi tivi, which distinguished his otherwise orthodox business attire, Chief Ragoso was in the U. S. partly as observer, partly as exhibit. at the 43rd general conference of Seventh-Day Adventists from all over the world. As observer, Kata Ragoso was chiefly struck by painted white women. Having supposed that the actions of all people, like those of his own, were guided by religion, he concluded that the U. S. is reverting to heathenism.

Two unrelated doctrines give the name of the church which William Miller, a Manhattan Baptist layman, began expounding in 1831. Close inspection of the Bible convinced him and his zealous Fundamentalist followers that the Sabbath commanded by God to be kept holy was not the first day of the week but the last. Secondly, these Sabbatarians devoutly believe in what they call the "soon coming" of Christ. Adventist Miller preached that this was to happen between March 21. 1843 and March 21, 1844. The fact that it did not was for Seventh-Day Adventists "the Great Disappointment." Revising their prophecies, they concluded they had erred in reading literally a reference to a sanctuary in Daniel, 8:14. Thereafter Adventists believed that Christ entered a heavenly sanctuary in 1844, would return to the earth when He concluded His work therein.

Like Jews, Adventists eschew pork. which some of them call simply "hog meat." Abstinence from liquor, tobacco, narcotics is a criterion for Adventist fellowship. Meat, condiments, drugs and excessive medication are frowned upon. As a denomination, the Seventh-Day Adventists ontrol many a sanatorium throughout the world.

At their San Francisco conference last week, first to be held since 1930, the Seventh-Day Adventists heard many a report about their church's work. Adventists now number 422,968 in 8.000 churches throughout the world. Believing piously in Christ's words, and this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come (Matt. 24:14), the Adventists keep 25,000 missionaries and institutional workers busy in 577 languages and dialects in 353 nations from Tibet to China to Ethiopia to New Zealand. With one Adventist laboring abroad for every 18 members at home, their per capita missionary strength is the world's greatest. Likewise the Seventh-Day Adventists, pre-eminently persons of modest circumstances, made such churches as the Episcopal look niggardly in the extreme. According to reports issued last week, Adventist missionary work at home and abroad during the past six years received more than $50,000,000. Total Adventist income for 1930-34 for all purposes was some $213,000,000. In sharp contrast with such churches as the Baptist and Methodist which retrenched during Depression, the Adventists kept every mission open, every able missionary on the job, never felt it necessary to dip into a $1,000,000 reserve fund.

*So named in anticipation of the wealth they were supposed to contain by the Spanish navigator who discovered them in 1567.

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