The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1881-03-23
Human Progress-A Cheerful View.
Progress.


No topic is so fruitful as the one question
asked by everybody, and yet successfully
answered BY nobody: "Where is human pro-
gress to lead the world?" L believe it will
maze all races better Men often puzzle
themselves about the predicted millennium,
but whether il means the first or second, or
third 900 years after Christ, is still prob
lem; and John Dryden makes his view
rather indefinite, as he comments upon
Bishop Halls inquiry:
What riddles are in that prophecy which
no human tongue can reveal. When to fix
the beginning of that marvellous millenary,
and where the end" Dryden writes:
'sghen at your second coming you appear,
(For fOreten the millenary YEAR,
The sharpemed earth shall vex the earth no more,
But earth unbidden, shall produce her store
The magical victories of mind over matter
In this one city often make the widest the
cries possible; and my old friend DR.. W. A.
Hammond, Surgeon General of the United
states under President Lincoln, who is now
startling society by his bold ability in the
treatment of nervous diseases has solved a
great problem, in the International Review
for March, by mis- mastery treatise on The
Scientific Relations of Modern Miracles >
What he saws in this one passage is the view
OF the highest and best philosophy:
A miracle may be defined as an occurrence Of
knowledge of natural law is constantly enlarging
IL follows that the domain OF miracle Is syste
matically decreasing. When the time comes, IL Il
ever should, In which our knowledge of natural
law will be complete the supernatural will have
ceased 70 exist. Experience teaches us the stso
lutte truth of this view. What were considered
known 70 be within the operations of natural law
and things which many among US now conceive
10 be supernatural, will. with the advance o.
Science De no more regarded as the special and
exceptional acts OF a superior being, than arr
echpses, comets, shooting stars, epdemics, etc.
which not very many years ago, were looked upOI
as miraculous warnings or punishments. The be
lief in miracles is only another mode of expressin,
ignorance, and man instinetiyely takes refuge IL
IN the supernatural till his knowledge of tn
natural is sufficient TO explain the events which
are passing around him.
And then the gifted philosopher proceed
to explain several of the more modern mir
acles still accepted by some OF the thee
Iogians among which he classes "Our Lady
of LOurdes," and other Authorizations. costa
sizes, cures, dreams, miracles. etc.
Perhaps there is no more satisfactory wa.
TO illustrate modern progress than to appl
existing inventions or discoveries resultin
from the application of scientific princi
pies. and to ask ourselves how sue
inarvels as the magnetic telegraph, the loco
motive the telephone, the photograph
would have affected those periods of huma
existence when miracle seemed to grow o.
every tree, and TO bluse in every flOwel
Judged by the marvels of every privat
house, and by the novelties seer in ever
street of our great cities. by saunter alon
Broadway In New York, Chestnut stree
Philadelphia, State street, Boston. or any {
the great thoroughfares of other cities,
would not require much imagination
create a capital augury that the milleniuI
is at hand, or to impel, as they do ever
moment, the question: Where is huma
progress to lead the world? Where, If ID