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2 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. ’ ’