Newspaper Page Text
r r
A THE PRESBYTERIA1
The knowledge of God and belief in him lie at the
basis of the new life. "He that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek him." One must understand clearly the
character and existence of God, his nature and attributes,
and must accept the fact that he will render to
every man according to his works, if he would get into
close relations with him in life and service. God the
- ?
i aiuti, me representative ot the Godhead, must be
known, as well as God the Son, the Savior, and God
the Spirit, who applies the grace and regenerates the
heart.
Immediately in touch with the doctrine of God, which
is so little emphasized and so much taken as a mere matter
of course, is the doctrine of sin, of which one hears
so little these days. If the fact and nature of sin be
not preached, one need not expect very pronounced
ideas of God and his existence and nature. The two
doctrines stand together. A wrong conception of God,
for instance as love and only love, ignoring his justice
and holiness, will give one a very poor idea of the inconceivable
abomination of sin. And low ideas of sin,
...... uv.ici in it as oniy a mistortune and as something
which has within itself or within its punishment some
remedial process, tend to depreciation of the divine nature
and character.
The calamities that come again and again upon human
life and happiness, touch the hearts of many and
evoke the most unselfish and generous sentiment toward
the afflicted. Last week Congress voted $800,000 for
the relief of the Italian sufferers. The National Red
Cross Society sent out $400,000, and on January 5, the
cf no m a - T-T ?-? - ? '1 * r
n?_i iiamuurg sanca from Mew York with 25 tons
of clothing and 13 tons of provisions to feed and clothe
the starving and half naked survivors in Calabria and
Sicily.
A secular paper tells us, with all seriousness, that the
other day "when the people of Catania were panicstricken
the cardinal-archbishop exhorted them to be
calm and promised that the body of Ste. Agatha should
be carried around in procession. Ste. Agatha is regarded
as the special deliverer from all scourges, and according
to history, the pious inhabitants of Catania diverted
the course of the lava stream in 1669, when a
fearful eruption of Mount Aetna occurred, by extending
the veil of Ste. Agatha towards it, thus saving the city,
as the lava was turned aside near the Benedictine monastery
and receded into the sea." Does the cardinal
archbishop really believe any such stuff, or is he simply
following a superstitious people?
An interesting incident has been related to us by one
who knows the facts in the case, as illustrating the
way in which the priests sometimes delude the unwary
but are occasionally caught in their own trap. A young
man out in one of the Louisiana parishes wished to
marry his first cousin. It is against the law of the
state, but it is done all over the state among Romanists.
The priests charge these couples a fee in virtue
of which the blood relationship is removed (?). The
^ OF THE SOUTH. January 20, 1909.
particularly intelligent young man referred to was to
pay ten dollars for his wedding fee and another ten
dollars for the removal of the interfering cousinship.
To get the better of the priest the young man brought
with him, to the marriage, also a male cousin. After
the knot was tied he said to the priest that he would
give him another ten dollars to take away the cousinship
with the male relative. The priest said he could
not do that. "Oh, then," said the voumr man. "T owe
you only ten dollars." and he could not be induced to
pay more!
In an address in Washington City, on Sunday, January
3, Mr. J. Campbell White, the secretary of the
Laymen's Missionary Movement, said that the United
States and Canada together last year gave $10,061,000
to the missionary cause, an increase of more than $1,coo,ooo,
against the previous year's record. He ppinted
out that the English-speaking world is giving 85 per
cent of the total of $22,000,000 annually given for the
cause of evangelization, and added that revolutionary results
have followed in the past two years the work of
this organization, and that at the present rate of increase,
instead of 4,000 missionaries from North America
wuiim me next ten years, tnere will De 24,cxx>. iNext
September the laymen's federation is to start a campaign
in Washington, which is to extend to 60 or 70 of the
largest cities in the country.
We sometimes see great circular diagrams, drawn
mainly in dark shades, with a modest white section,
indicating the proportionate strength numerically of
Paganism and Christianity. It i? refreshing to see that
the latest statistical tables indicate a remarkable ad
vance in the number of adherents to Christianity in
the whole world, and a corresponding1 reduction in the
number of those that are classed as entirely heathen.
Dr. Zellar, Director of the Statistical Bureau in Stutgart,
publishes estimates to the effect that of the 1,544,510,000
people in the world, 534.940,000 are Christians,
175,290,000 are Mohammedans, 10,860,000 are Jews, and
823,420,000 are heathen. Of these, 300,000,000 arc Confucians,
214,000,000 are Brahmins, and 121,000.000 Buddhists,
with other bodies of lesser numbers. In other
words, out of every thousand of the earth's inhabitants,
346 are Christian, 114 are Mohammedan, 7 are Israelite,
and 533 are of other religions. In 1885, in a table estimating
the population of the world at 1,461,285,500, the
number of Christians was put at 430,285,500; of Jews at
7,000,000; of Mohammedans at 230,000,000, and of
heathen at 794.000,000.
The mysterious monkish ruler of Thibet, the Dalai
Lama, has been for four years in China, since the expedition
to Lhassa of a British force under Colonel
Younghusband. He has been nominally a visitor and
really a prisoner. He now returns from Peking, without
temporal power, and the Chinese Imperial Government
has perpetrated a joke on him in conferring a new title,
"Sincere and Loyal Spreader of Civilization," the very
last thing the Lama of Thibet \Vould wish to be.