Items of Interest by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 15.

Items of Interest

By Editor

An appeal will be made in our next issue for dried fruit for the Pitcairn. This by way of preparation to those who may have it to furnish.

THE following item is clipped from a Gouverneur (New York) paper of last month. It presents a picture of the side where the greater number of the successes of the church are found:—

"The Rag Tag sociable of Trinity Church last evening was a first-class success,—so voted by all who attended. It was something out of the usual order of church sociables, as its name would indicate."

Truly yet sadly has it been well expressed:— "The Church has fallen, the beautiful Church, And her shame is her boast and pride."

ONE of the finest editions of a daily paper ever issued is the San Francisco Examiner's Midwinter Fair edition. Its illustrations are admirably apropos, and the majority of its special articles, by such writers as Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson, Hon. Frank McCoppin, Joaquin Miller, John Vance Cheney, Annie Laurie, Irwin C. Stump, and a host of others, well written. The wonderful resources and natural beauties of the State are set forth in general and by counties, and what the Midwinter Fair is to be is well told. The issue contains seventy pages, and the price of the immense volume contained therein is only 10 cents.

Christianity in Japan.—In the Signs of January 8 we printed an article on page 146, entitled "The Effect of the Parliament of Religions in Japan." The opinions of Buddhists are there given, that Americans are seeking a new religion, because dissatisfied with Christianity, and are ripe for Buddhism. A writer in the New York Observer, Mr. Edward B. Sturges, of Japan, believes that "Buddhism and its sister, Shintoism, are in their death throes, and that Christianity is already nearing a complete triumph in Japan, at least." But the writer admits that there has been in Japan a reaction against Christianity, yet thinks this reaction only temporary, and that Japan will eventually become a "Christian nation." There are causes which are now delaying this, one of the chief of which to his mind is "the lack of devotion to their principles on the part of so many visitors from Christian countries while in foreign non-Christian lands." Chief among their derelictions of duty he mentions nonattendance at church services and lack of respect for Sunday. In fact, the "American bar" is in full blast on that day, few of the patrons of which are Japanese. "All home restraints were thrown to the winds." Some visit the theater and go sight-seeing, while some, "even," went "shopping," as though that were worse than pleasure seeking and liquor drinking. "One merchant told me," he writes, "that Sunday was his busiest day. Nearly all their customers were tourists from Christian lands!" And so on and on. Now all such pleas as this would never need to be made if the ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ would recognize the fact that there are no "Christian countries" or "Christian nations," and that the only Christians there are are those who hold living connection with Jesus Christ, and manifest it by a godly life. There is another thing shown by this article,—the mark of Christianity is coming to be not Christ and his teaching, but the observance of Sunday, an institution which in its origin and nature is antichristian.