p. 1 | SIGNIFICANT ITEMS by F. A. Buzzell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 11, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 19.

SIGNIFICANT ITEMS.

By F. A. Buzzell

ACCORDING to the Boston Pilot, there were in 1825, one Roman Catholic priest in Maine, one in New Hampshire, and one in Massachusetts, with eight churches. There are now in New England, according to this authority, one Archbishop, five Bishops, 441 priests, 432 churches, and a Catholic population of nearly 7,000,000.

Reader, do you ask the amount levied on this great city? We reply, $30,000,000! Of this, one-quarter is required to pay the interest on the city debt, which is more than $100,000,000. Unfortunate New York! one may exclaim, burdened and robbed, and every year drifting into a still more helpless condition. . . . Cheating and robbing is the order of the day. There never was so much defalcation as this year has brought to light.—Martel Concord Statesman.

My eye was most revolted by the stiff bronze figure of St. Peter, sitting bolt upright, key in hand and foot extended, to receive the pious homage of the people. This miserable figure has long been the particular object of public worship—the lip service of millions of the devout has repeatedly worn away the solid metal, and the holy saint has been at least thrice retouched. The best of the joke to a heretic is, that it is not St. Peter at all, but an old and very ugly statue of Jove, enhaloed and simply grasping a key instead of a bolt.—Grace Greenwood, Visit to St. Peters.

A theological student may be never so conscientious and consecrated, but he chooses his church on common business principles, as it is proper he should. The only unwisdom is in talking as if he did not. He never remits a cent of his salary because he calls his parish a field of labor. When he leaves that parish for another, he says God has called him to another field of labor, and the dismissing council says amen; but all it really amounts to is that people are tired of him and he of them, his salary is too small, the house is damp, or the situation unhealthy; or he wants to live in a city, or preach his old sermons, or have a wider scope. God calls him to go just where the minister thinks, on the whole, he would rather go.—Gail Hamilton.

F. A. BUZZELL.