CHURCH NOTES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 16 December 1901, Page 3

CHURCH NOTES.

[By Amicds.] Pla America every department of progress is up-to-date. Among other things we have been reviewing a guide-book for a steamer trip up the Hudson. It must undoubtedly be a very delightful excursion, but the description of it in the guidebook is not less remarkable than the journey itself. The artistic and beautiful language used by the writer deserver a wide circulation. An eye for the beautiful he evidently writes for the common guide-book with all the passion of his nature. Three hundred and twenty-five miles of beautiful panorama, done by the master-band of the Creator. Hundreds of miles made sacred to the heart of every true American as the arena in which oar forefathers fought the battles that freed them from the tyranny of despots. What comedies, dramas, and tragedies, have been enacted in this vast theatre, with the|world as audience, and God the scenic artist and scene-shifter not only, but Manager as well 1 To-day the grandest city of the Western Empire graces the end of its course, while the great statue of Liberty waves it a farewell by day and at night lights its pathway out into the eternity of the sea.

But this writer grows more charming still, until the excursionist must feel an excitement most intense before commencing the journey. His imagination like that of the author of the book, must get to boiling point. Another quotation gives us one of the moss beautiful and original similes, that perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that we can find no parallel in Buskin. “Man has added his cities, towns, villages and scattered dwellings; cleared the forests away in places; laid iron roads over which his trains go rushing to and fro: and built and equipped the great steamers that plough the great waters of the valley; yet still such is the grandeur of the scale upon which the Great Architect has laid out this region that all these are but as dust and cobwebs upon a modern edifice, and viewed at a distance so blend with nature that her original beauties still remain.”

One of our modern writers H. G. Wells is very sanguine of [the future, but he has not warned us against the time when advertisers will monopolise the application of photography to journalism, A story is told in a recent speech by Bishop Potter of New York, that shows how rapidly we are reaching this stage. He was travelling in Minnesota, when a man approached him on the railway platform and scanned his features clo-ely, “excuse me,” he said at last, "but haven’t I seen your picture in the papers ?’’ The Bishop replied that probably he had. "I thought so” continued the inquisitive stranger. "May I ask what you were cured of. ? ”

The destruction of Church property is a growing evil, Presumably it is _ among the young that we look for the offenders. Writing on covers and fly-leaves of books during the service is a practice frequently resorted to. It is not boys and girls alone but young men and young women who need to be reminded. The handwriting and sentiments (to term it mildly) often shew the advanced scholar. A young man had left his book in a seat a few Sundays ago and when he returned two Sundays after there faced him on opening his book, in the neat handwriting of a young lady, the words "Think of me for ever.” The breaking of valuable windows is an evil from which young women are excluded. The practice is continued among the young men. We trust that the gentle reminder given by the Eev York oh Sunday evening will have the desired effect.