The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-11-08
THIS IS A SWIFT AGE
Rev. Clarence T. Brown Lectures
ON Railroading and Religion.
MODERN SPEED MUST BE UNDER
INTELLIGENT ORDERS.
No Man Can Run Fast Enough to
Cutwit Conscience, to Get Past
God-Railroading, Like Religion,
Is Matter of Faith.


Many local railroad men with their
families gathered at the First Congre-
gational church last night to hear the
sermon of the Rev. Clarence T. Brown
on Modern Speed" Dr.. Brown took
for his text His word runneth very
swiftly" Psalm cxlvii, Is, and said. in
part:
The history of railroads fully written
would include a large part of mans
history for the last go years. both on its
industrial and its social sides. 1t is
laid like it's own steel lines across all
fields and all problems, from the old
question whether machinery helps or
hurts man. to the latest discussions of
government control and the claims of
the reformer and the socialist.
This is the age of TOOLS" and of all
machines the railroad employs the
most men and means the most to the
general public. Its lines are long
enough to circle the globe Is times, and
their sudden removal would be an over
whelming calamity, for all modern life
has been adjusted to it in such a way
as to depend upon it. By it mans
wealth and opportunities, knowledge
fold as one enthusiastic orator has
said, Measured by what we can learn,
see do and enjoy in a lifetime we live
longer than Methuselah, we are wiser
man who looks at lift from the stnad-
point of character way we'll take with
q large discount.
For although
1.-THE mighty forces of mysterious space
Are ons by one subdued by lordly man,
His bold feet scaling heights before un-
trOd.
Light, darkness, air and water, heat and
cold.
He bids go, forth and bring him power
And yet. though ruler king and demigod,
He walks with his fierce passions I'M
controlled.
The conquer of all Ehings-save himself
THE MASTERY OF NATURE.
The mastery of nature conduces to
self-mastery, but it does not insure it.
In the race of industrial life the loco
motive
with heart of fire and breath of smoke.
With shining shaft and wheel,
Easily leads the procession.
1t seems at times almost human. with
it's own individuality, its moods and
freaks and passions. There is poetic
fitness in the tombstone of old General,
the war locomotive, as it stands among
the graves of the Union soldiers.
The locomotive is perhaps the best
type of our modern life, with its high
pressure and it's breathless haste.
Rapid transit is decidedly modern.
Abraham could travel in his day just
as fast as your own grandfather could
in his youth.
After the Russian disaster, when Ma
poleon made the trip from Smorgoni to
Paris, 1000 miles in five days and
nights, he probably broke the record
up to that date, while man need not
be an emperor now to cover an equal
distance in one day and night
With the locomotive, the bicycle and
the modern printing press, we are all
going at great rate. As, one of our dig
nified senators said a few years ago,
if the man of the last century should
suddenly appear on the scene of our
modern railroad life, he could Droba-
bly, not find a better expression for his
feelings than that contained in the old
nursery rhyme:
There was . mad man,
And he had mad wife,
And the children were mad beside;
So on q mad horse they all of them got,
And madly away did ride
And he would be quite right. if the
first glance told him all there was to
iell; if, back of all this rushing. roar
ing business, there was not the quiet
dispatcher's office and a perfect sys-
tenn of oversight and control.
Any man in his right mind would be
just as cautious about boarding a train
as his grandfather would have been, if
he did not know that it was under the
direction of man who understood the
situation so we'll that he could give safe
orders for it, and under the hands of a
crew who could keep it under absolute
control.
NEED FOR DEFINITE ORDERS.
Every man knows that the greater
the speed the greater the need for
definite ORDERS exact obedience to
them accurate calculation of track and
load. and perfect control of the train.
In railroading, any other kind of speed
is madness, and what is true of rail-
reading is true of living. How many
men there are who are leading "a fast
life" The fires roaring. The steam
screaming, running at the top of their
speed, and all without any attention
to the orders of God. No calculation
of curves or grades, no brakes, no self
control, a run away" special, a peril
to the other trains on his run, and sure
of the ditch for himself at last The
Purple Emperor" himself cannot run
fast enough to outrun nature and her
laws, and the Purple Emperor does not
try. Old gravitation is always there
no matter how swift the speed. No
man can run fast enough to outrun
conscience, TO get past God. Gravity
when duly reckoned with is an indis-
pensable partner, when trified with an
inevitable destroyer. The moral law is
no less persistent; with it there is a
good run, against it inevitable wreck.
The train of the soul on the road of life
must have its orders and a conductor
with enough common sense to obey
them. God does not give orders merely
for his own satisfaction any more than
train dispatcher does. but for the
safety and success of the business.
What would you think of a conductor
who should look upon every order that
he receives as a mere exercise of SUI
perior authority on the part of the dis
patcher, and becoming vexed at last,
as he surely would at their constant
repetition, should decide to assert his
independence by ignoring them and by
running his train according to his own
notion? If he ever lived to get to the
end of his division he would never have
the chance to do so desperate and fool
ish a thing again. And yet on the road
of life how many men are doing that
very thiu02