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Netos of Interest Gathered Here and There
Ait the Bible Conference last week, Dr. Goodell,
of New York, said, “The message of the hour for
the 'Church is evangelism.” “The evangelistic
note,” he said, “is the highest note the Christian
ministry can reach, and it is the most difficult to
sustain.”
The 'Reason of Easter.
The Baptist and Reflector had, in its last issue, an
editorial on Easter, giving information as to the ori
gin of the celebration of Easter Sunday. In part
the editorial says: “It is the Sunday intended to
commemorate the resurrection of our Lord from the
grave, it being supposed that he arose on that day.
Baptists, however, take little stock in Easter, for
several reasons:
“1. Because it is a heathen custom grafted on
to Catholicism. The heathen were accustomed to
celebrate the venial equinox, the return of spring.
And the Catholics, according to their usual rule,
simply turned the heathen custom into a Catho
lic festival.
“2. The purport of Easter is to use the occasion
to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, as we said.
That is all right. We believe, of course, in the
resurrection, and we believe in celebrating it, and
in emphasizing it in every way.
“The change of the Sabbath day from Sat
urday to Sunday was made in honor of the res
urrection of Christ. Up to the day he arose from
the grave, his follower's all observed Saturday as
the Sabbath day. But from that very day on
they began to observe Sunday as the Sabbath
day. The observance of Saturday as the 'Sab
bath day commemorated the creation of the world,
because ‘in six days God made the heavens and
the earth, and rested on the seventh day.’ The
observance of Sunday commemorated the resurrec
tion of Christ. Every time, then, we observe Sun
day as the Sabbath day, we proclaim the resurrec
tion of Jesus Christ from the grave, and we say
to the world; in observing Sunday instead of Sat
urday, that the resurrection of Christ was a more
important event in the world’s history than the
creation of the world —important by so much more
as the spiritual is more important than the material,
the eternal than the temporal. All of the other
Christian denominations, except the Seventh Day
Adventists, join us in this method of celebrating
the resurrection.”
* M
Mrs. Sage ’s Gift to the Y. M. C. A.
A gift of $250,000 was recently made anonymous
ly to the Young Men’s Christian Association of
America, to be used in erecting a headquarters
building in New York. It has been announced that
the gift came from Mrs. Russell Sage, and that she
has now added an additional SIOO,OOO to the origi
nal gift. This amount will cover the entire cost
of the building which will be on a site running
from Twenty-seventh street through to Twenty
eighth street, between Fourth and Lexington ave
nues. This site cost $135,000, and was given by
Mrs. William E. Dodge.
The announcement of the gifts was made by
Cleveland H. Dodge, and great was the rejoicing- of
the members at the additional gift of SIOO,OOO,
which assures the completion of the building with
out debt. It will be the headquarters of the Y. M.
C. A. of all North America.
At the suggestion of both Mrs. Sage and Mrs.
‘Dodge it will also provide ample space for the
offices of the new national board of the Young
Women’s Christian Association, of which Miss
Grace H. Dodge is chairman.
The building will be an eight-story structure, and
will be ready for occupancy in May, 1908.
H *
College Students ’ Ignorance of the Bible.
Prof. W. L. Phelps, some time ago, alleged that
college students suffered from “universal, profound
and complete” ignorance of the Bible. Dr. C. A.
Smith, of Chapel Hill, N. C., after making a test
of the students of the University of North Carolina,
disputes the statement, and in an article in the
Th? Golden Age for April 4, 1907.
Christian Observer thus describes the test adopted
to learn what the students knew:
“I submitted the following exercise without
warning to two sections of the freshman class, each
section numbering twenty-five, and to another class
numbering fifty and composed of juniors and se
niors :
“ Tell briefly the story of (a) Adam, Eve and
the Garden of Eden, (b) Noah, (c) Samson, (d)
David and Goliath, (e) Moses and Pharaoh.
“These are the characters, it will be observed,
selected by Professor Phelps as a test. The results
were an overwhelming disproof of Professor Phelps’
statement. Only twenty minutes papers were al
lowed to the students, but the hundred papers
handed in showed beyond question that each of the
Bible names written on the blackboard suggested a
definite idea and a definite group of associations.
No student missed as many as two of the questions,
and only three missed one. I hazard nothing in
saying that the Bible is the only monument of lit
erature, ancient or modern, on which the same num
ber of students would have exhibited so huge a
fund of general knowledge”
This result, Dr. 'Smith believes, is due to the Sun
day school more than to any other single agency,
for the “ Sunday school has in the Southern States
a reach and influence which Professor Phelps leaves
entirely out of account.” He adds:
“My own observation leads me to the belief that
the current ignorance of the Bible among college
students is not an ignorance of ‘supposedly familiar
stories of the Old Testament,’ or of the New Tes
tament; nor is it an ignorance primarily of Bible
doctrine or of Bible sanctions. It is ignorance:
(1) of the Bible history as a continuous whole,
(2) of Bible geography, (3) of the distinctive types
of Bible literature, and (4) of the books of the
Bible as units. The Sunday school of the future
will devote not less attention to the former things,
but more attention to the latter things.”
•5 *
Diborce Statistics.
During working hours of court officials there is
a divorce suit filed every two minutes and a divorce
granted every three minutes in the United States,
according to figures compiled by the Census Bu
.reau. This has been the average for the past twen
ty years, and census officials say the average is in
creasing at an alarming rate.
For the twenty-year period, from 1867 to 1837,
there were onlv 328,000 divorce suits filed in this
country. For the twenty-year period, frnn 188”
to 1907, the number aggregates 1,400,000, or more
than four times the number for the first period.
Experts figure it that for the twenty-year period
prior to 1887 there were thirty-three divorces for
every 100 000 inhabitants, while -for the twenty
year period, from 1887 to 1907, there were seventy
divorces for every 100,000 population. Decrees of
divorce are issued in about two-thirds of the suits
filed.
*5
A Warning to the Saloon.
Probably no better illustration of the fact that
even the saloon’s best friends see that it is doomed
to defeat at the hands of the temperance forces
of the country, can be found than a recent edito
rial in Bonfort’s Wine and Spirit Circular. We
rarely quote from this source, but are glad to do
so in this instance:
“With more than one-half of the geographical
limits of this great country under laws prohibiting
the sale of alcoholic beverages; with Tennessee
passing through her legislature a bill that almost
amounts to state prohibition; with the West Vir
ginia legislature passing a measure to submit the
prohibition of the manufacture and sale of wines
and spirits to a vote of the people; with Texas
providing that express companies transporting- wines
and spirits shall take out a $5,000 license; with
the Illinois legislature considering a county unit
Iceal option measure and Indiana a SI,OOO license
for the few saloons that the Remonstrance law will
leave in that state; with Kentucky almost a dry
state and facing probably a legislative session that
will submit a prohibitory amendment; and with
an organization opposing us and sworn to our de
struction that seems to lack nothing in the way of
money or brains, enthusiasm, or persistent, untiring
work —what, may we ask, is the wine and spirit
trade doing to arrest the current of events or to
alter in any way the radical current of events
being forced upon the people in every state, county
and precinct?
“If there is one thing that seems settled beyond
question it is that the retail liquor tradei of this
country must either mend its ways materially or
be prohibited in all places save the business or ten
derloin precincts of our larger cities.
“If the Anti-Saloon League can maintain its
present organization it looks as if it will certainly
destroy the legalized saloon in all of the Southern
States, excepting perhaps in Missouri, and it is
certainly making strong headway in Indiana, Ohio,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and other Western
and Northern states.”
Far from sneering at the Anti-Saloon League, the
Wine and (Spirit Circular pays its respects thus:
“The Anti-Saloon League .... is not a mob
of long-haired fanatics, as some of the writers and
speakers connected with our business have declared,
but it is a strongly centralized organization, officer
ed by men of unusual ability, financiered by cap
italists with very long purses, subscribed to by hun
dreds of thousands of men, women and children
who are solicited by their various churches, advised
by well-paid attorneys of great ability, and it is
working with definite ideas to guide it in every
state, in every county, in every city and in every
precinct.
“If the Anti-Saloon League is defeated at any
point it immediately prepares for another attack
along new lines, and when it succeeds it at once
begins work for a more telling victory.
“Precinct local option, with the Anti-Saloon
League, is but the forerunner of county local op
tion, and this again is merely intended as a step
ping-stone to state prohibition. There is no ques
tion that this organization has well-prepared plans
for controlling the legislative branch of the gov
ernment at Washington, and of passing a national
prohibitory law at some time in the future, but be
fore it undertakes so gigantic an enterprise it is
working to cripple the trade in every possible way,
and —while we sleep—it is succeeding in the most
substantial manner.”
The Belief in a Tuture State.
In a symposium held in the Homiletic Review
for March, on the question of a belief in immor
tality and the reasons for such a belief, many in
teresting views are exploited, but we choose from
the number, a brief extract from the contribution
of Dr. Samuel McComb, of Cambridge, Mass., as
follows:
“Faith in a future life, or at least such a faith
as has an ennobling influence on our present exis
tence, can be reached only through a prior faith
in the rational and ethical character of God, and
of the system of things which he has called into
being. And this, it seems to me, is the great con
tribution which Christ has made to our belief. . . .
In pre-Christian ages thq argument from con
science was keenly debated; at most it raised a
presumption and kept alive in the human heart
the splendid peradventure. Now, Christ confirms
the vaticinations of our moral nature by unveiling
God as a father whose essence is self-sacrificing
love, and by relating man to the God he has thus
unveiled. A being so akin to God is worthy of an
immortal future. Nay, more; whatever theory we
may hold of the resurrection, one thing is certain,
as Harnaek says, ‘From Christ’s grave has sprung
the indestructible faith in the overthrow of death
and in an eternal life.’ Men Jgfcve felt that were
such a life as his permanently Crushed beneath the
heel of death the world would be for us, to use
Hume’s phrase, ‘a riddle, an enigma, an inexplica
ble mystery. ’ ’