The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1878-12-18
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.


darkness is disappearing, and the command
''Let there be light is sounding along the
pathways of science and investigation. The
people of the earth who believe in God are
those who carry forward its grandest enter
prises and achieve its most enduring tri.
umphs, while men of the Bob IngersoIl
school bubble about the mistakes OF Moses"
Those who accept the truths of the Bible
as immovable foundations upon which
to rear superstructures OF faith
and good works move forward and upward
beyond the reach of sneers and rejoice in the
progress the world is making under their
leadership. Only Christianity is light; all
other religions are darkness. Christianity
yitIlizes every faculty of body and mind. 1t
makes the rough places smooth and decks
the desolate places with glsdness 1t sub.
dues the wilderness, news dowr the noun
tains, builds the highways of commerce and
enlightens the savage. The New York Herald
asks, "What is the world coming top and re-
spends by saying that "from the printers
block has grown the rough wood cut, the
copper plate, followed by the steel eDgrav-
AAABJ ehS hthO6AoPhlO,
and photo-engraving processes that enable
'us to produce in few hours fac-similes
to any scale of the most deliberately lined
drawing. BY the aid CT the camera we can
reduce the proportions OF the elephant to
'to those of a mouse without distorting
line, and enlarge those of microscopic ami
'malculs to the scale of a mammoth with
\. al -
the most minute parts. Nearly seventy
years ago a strong limbed youth fer
'ried travellers to Staten Island, where
they took the old post road leading through
Elizabeth and New Brunswick to Philadel-
'phia Recently an old man died worth
many millions. He owned railroads over
which passengers were sometimes carried at
the rate of a mile per minute. The long
and weary journey to Philadelphia or Al
'bany had become a matter of two or three
hours. Yet, the strong limbed youth and
the old millionaire were one and the same
person, and the altered conditions of life
serve but to illustrate the growth of things
within lifetime
This is we'll, but there are other trirmphs
of sublime, significance. During lie time
republics have been founded upon the
wrecks of thrones. Men in bondage have
been set free. Benevolence has built its
monuments on all of the continents. The
ignorant have been educated, the blind
made to see the deaf to hear and the lame
to walk. Christianity has lovingly
thrown its arms around the insane and
given them back their reason. 1t has built
asylumns for the unfortunate. and with
lavish charity fed the hungry and clothed
the naked. Within the period of another
lige time Asia will be brought under the in
fiuences OF Christian civilization, and
Africe, the terra iacognita of the world,
will be the theater for the display of Chris.
tian courage and endurance. Thus the world
moves upward, humanity rises, the soul ex-
pands and the millennlal era dawns; and
still the command is, LET there be light"
But surely" says the Herald, "time, the
destroyer, will remain supreme. Nothing
of human fashioning will survive his as
'saults. Even the mountains bow their
'crumbling heads before him and the great
rivers hide themselves in his presence.
There is nothing so enduring as time.
The fieeung sounds of the song, Of
merry music, of signs and laughter
these are the contrasts in endur-
'ance TO time. They are heard and are dead
forever. That might be said before Edison
discovered the photograph. Now sounds
are fixed for all time in enduring metal.
They aSe heard, and sleep to awake again
in succession of utterances whose same
ness proves that the cords or words held
chained in that metallic prison have be-
come immortal in their alliance with the
'imperisbable."
Time may be the great dstroyer," but his
corroding tooth will never obscure or oblit-
crate the impressions made by good
words and good deeds upon the human heart.
Before Edison caught sounds Of the human
voice upon his metallic cylinders, good