The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-12-15

been turned into beautiful homes for
the less prospered, and if you will look
in you will see the poorest table has
abundance and the smallest wardrobe
luxury and the harp, waiting to have
it's strings thrummed, leaning against
the piano, waiting for its keys to be
fingered. Yes, we have on the shelves
of our free libraries the full story of
dispensaries, and what a time of suf-
fering there must have been on those
battlefields of Sedan and Gettysburg
and South Africa one Or two hundred
years ago.
A NEW WORLD BORN.
Hospitals and almshouses must
have been a necessity once, but they
would BIS useless now. And you see
all the swamps have been drained. The
sewerage Of the great towns has been
perfected. NJ the worlds climate
is so improved that there are no pneu-
monias to come out of the old or
rheumatisms out of the dampness or
fevers out of the heat. Consumptions
b~anished, pneumonias banished, diph-
iberia banished, opthalmia b~anished,
neura1gias banished. AS near as l
can tell from what I ave read. our
atmosphere of this century is a min
Cling of the two months of May and
October of the nineteenth century"
And we believe what our escort says.
for as we pas on We find health glow
ing in every cheek, and beaming in
| every eye, and springing in every step,
and a~rticulating in every utterance,
and you and 1 whisper to each other as
our escort has his attention drawn to
| some new sunrise upon the morning
sky, and we say, each to the other:
"Who would believe that this is the
world we ived in over a hundred years
ago? Look at those men and women
uya rarr on fhn wood HnVy M nrOUn6
the human race! Such beauty! Such
strength, Such gracefulness! Such
genality, Faces without the mark Of
one borrow! Cheeks that seem never
to have been wet by one tear! A race
sublimated! A new world born!"
But I say to our escort: Did all this
merely happen so? Are all the good
here spontaneously good? How did
you get the old shipwrecked world
afoat again, out of the breakers into
the smooth seas?" mo, no." responds
our twenty-first century escort. D
you see those towers? Those are the
towers of churches, towers of reforma-
tory institutions, towers of Christian
schools. Walk with me. and let us en-
ter some of these temples" We enter,
and I find that the music is in the ma
jor key, and none of it in the minor.
Gloria in Excelsis" rising above "Glo-
ria in Excelsis." Tremolo stop in the
organ not SO much used as the trumpet
stop. More of Ariel than of Naomi.
More chants than dirges.
But I say to our twenty-first century
escort: 81 canno understand this.
Have these worshippers M sorrows, or
have they forgotten their sorrows?"
Our escort responds: Sorrows! Why,
they had sorrows more than you could
count, but by a Irvine illumination
that the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries never enjoyed they under
stand the uses of sorrow and are COM
forted with a supernatural coincidence
such as previous centuries never expe-
rienced."
PROPHECY FULFILLED.
1 ask again the Interpreter, HAS
death been banished from the world?"
The answer is, mo; but people die
now only when the physical machinery
is worn out and they realize it is time
to go Inc that they are certainly and
without doubt going into a world
where they will be infinitely better
off and are to live in a mansion that
awaits their immediate occupancy"
But how was all this effected?" I ask
our escort. Answer: "By floods of gos-
pei power. You who lived in the
nineteenth century never saw a re-
vival of religion to be compared with
what occurred in the latter part of the
"A0 SA& "hA P"AS ~ NAo
twenty-first century. The prophecy
has been fulfilled that "a nation shall
be born in a day-that is, 10, 600, 900 or
20, 200, 900 or 40, 200, 900 people converted
in twenty-four hours"
AS you and I see in this terrestrial
visitation of the coming centuries that
the church has, under God, accom-
plished so much, we ask our escort, the
spirit Of the twenty-first century, to
show us the different kinds Of
churches. So we are taken in and out
of the churches of different denomina-
lions and we find that they are just
as different in the twenty-first century
as they were different in the nine
teenth, when we worshipped in them.
There is unity in them as to the great
essentials of salvation. But we enter
the Baptist church, and it is baptiSmal
lay n we see the candidates for
membership immersed. And we go
into a Presbyterian church and see a
group of parents around the baptismal
font holding up their children for the
christening. And we enter the EpiScO-
pal church and hear the solemn roll Of
her liturgies, and her ministers are
gowned and surpliced. And we enter
the Lutheran church, n we hear in
the sermon preached the doctrines of
the greatest of German reformers. And
we go into the Methodist church just
III lille W SlC uOWn at a love least anu
give audible Amen" when the service
stirs us. AT least so kinds Of churches
in the twenty-first century, as there
were $50 different kinds of churches
in the nineteenth century.
80 spirit of the twenty-first entu-
ry, will you not show US something Of
the commercial life of your timer"
He answers, Tomorrow I will show
| you ALL" And on the morrow he takes
us Through the great marts Of trade
n shows us the bargain makers and
the shelves on which the goods lay OF
the tierces and hogsheads in which
they are contained. I notice that the
fabrics are of better quality than any
thing I ever saw in our nineteenth CEN
fury, for the factories are more skill
full, and the wheels that turn and the
looms that clack and the engines that
rumble are driven by forces that were
not a century ago discovered.
HONESTY EVERYWHERE.
The prices of the fabrics indicate a
reasonable profit, and the firm in the
counting room and the clerks at the
counter and the draymen at the door