This important business city has no newspaper and though the scholar class may read the provincial official gazette, readers of Peking or coast port papers are indeed few, But we now boast of a weekly printed sermon, issued each Sunday morning by the Confucian "Heart washing assembly." At present in this enlightened province weekly attendance at the Confucian Temple is the correct thing for the local elite and these magnificent buildings are now popular rendezvous as they never were in the old Imperial days.
Last Sunday's sermon, lying on the table as I write, is an interesting document, but I doubt if a literal translation for the ''N.-C. Daily News" would compete with the Dean's or the Rev. C. E.. Darwent's stirring appeals. If any one "fancies that the reformation of Shansi is being hastened by fiery republican oratory in these official Sunday services, let him see our venerable lecturer-in-chief, amongst the statuary and gorgeous cypresses around our Yuan Dynasty Areopagus (Bf) and such suspicions will be dispelled.
The sermon before me is based on a text, "An old Chinese proverb." The preacher says "You can never get the circle perfect by hewing it at will, You had better put it on the lathe. Follow your leader without swerving. Do not
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.