The Monmouth inquirer. [volume] (Freehold, N.J.) 1865-1933, 1905-11-30


I dresses and a shawl made so strong
that they will last for twenty, thirty,
forty, fifty years, and then have her
! will them to her children and grand
children as family relics For my part,
I thank God for the comforts of mod
ern dress. / thank God that for a
mere song the sewing machine and the
big factory can give me light garments
for summer and heavy garments for
winter and brighten my Easter serv-
ice not only with the flowers of the
field, but with new spring garments
for both masculine and feminine.
Benefits of improvements.
But, after discussing for little while
the benefits which machinery has Civ
en- to us in our eating and drinking
and our sanitation and in our wearing
apparel, shall we stop there2 Shall we
not at least hint at the wonderful ben
efits that have come to us from tele-
phone and telegraph and the modern
newspapers and the lights by which
we read in the evening hours, and
from the typewriter which has SO lift
ed the onerous burdens of professional
and mercantile life, and the electric
cars which for cents make it possi-
BILE for business man to be in his Of
fee at half past in the morning and
yet take his evening meal in a subur-
ban home surrounded by flowers and
grass grown yard, as well as by wife
and children? Shall we not thank God
for the wonderful inventions of the
biologists laboratory, for the micro
scope the Roentgen rays and all the
wonderful means by which disease is
being halted in its onward march and
driven back and by which the crooked
limbs are made straight? Shall we not
thank God for the wonderful system
Of street lamps we have, which makes
midnight in large city almost as
bright as midday and which light Is
the greatest of all crime preventers?
And, above all, shall we not thank God
for our library shelves filed with
books, cheap books, yet books ready
to serve us when we stretch out our
hands for them?
We are living in a wonderful age.
How wonderful it is not one of us can
truly grasp. l was never more i'm
pressed with the rapid advancement of
material blessings and of inventions
than when reading recently synopsis
of a lecture delivered by the late Bish-
op Clark of Rhode Island in 1856. At
that time there were no bicycles, no
automobiles, no typewriting machines,
no telephones, no Atlantic cables, no
transcontinental railroad, no great
steamship lines as we conceive them,
no successful airships, no sleeping cars,
no large office buildings, with their Gle
vators, and no electric cars. The title
of this lecture was ''The Next Fifty
Years" These are some of the prophe
cies Bishop Clark then made: eve have
made wonderful progress in travelling
facilities during the last half century,
but do you think improvement is going
to stop there? Nay. Posterity will not
be content to travel at the slow rate of
only thirty miles an hour, seated in
these narrow cars, stided with bad air
and dirt. 1t costs no great effort to
imagine fifty years hence a splendid
locomotive. with hotel, spacious par
lors, dining rooms and dormitories,
moving gently as the bird flies over a
road carpeted by turf and bordered by
shade trees and sweet shrubs from
Boston to San Francisco in four days"
Have not the good bishops prophecies
almost literally come true? Shall we
not soon leap the continent from the
Atlantic to the Pacific in less than four
days? Then Bishop Clark goes on and
prophesies some of the wonderful in
ventions that have come to pass in the
electric world: "1he electric battery,
which now in some of our cities strikes
the midnight hour, may be made at
evening to light all. of our street lamps
at one flash, secure perfect uniformity
of time in our public clocks and kindle
beacon on these dreary rocks in the
sea- where human beings now endure
melancholy and dangerous solitude"
Bishop Clark from the celestial heights
might see those electric lights shining
today. Speak out, We lonely islanders
now in touch with mankind Speak
out!
Then the good bishop goes on and de-
scribes the wonderful invention Of the
modern typewriter, to me one Of the
greatest labor saving machines in the
world. He continues: There is an
other invention which I for one would
hail with exceeding joy 1t may seem
absurd to predict that the time may
come when it will not be customary
to teach our children how to write. 1t
would have been thought just as alb
surd fifty years ago to have foretold
that the boys of this generation would
grow up not knowing how to make a
pen. But that time is going to come"
Thus in closing this sermon on this
Thanksgiving Sabbath would have us
one and all, amid the great hum of fac
tory and by the flash Of electric spark,
make this one prayer: 20 God, make
me thankful for the food / eat, for the
clothing / wear and for the many,
many blessings of inventions round
| about me. Fill me with the holy de-
sire not to build for myself a hang
ing garden of Babylon, but to be so
blessed through the help of modern in