Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · May 19, 1904

How swiftly things are moving in this day of the Lord's preparation, and the world is being hurried on to the final consummation for which creation longs, we may be helped to realize by such statements as these from a recent editorial in the New York Times:—

One modern iron and steel plant at Hamilton, Ontario, bases a claim to distinction on the fact that it bought and reworked the iron of the steamship “Great Eastern,” which in its day was the largest ship in the world; the material of the original Niagara Suspension Bridge, which for many years was the only span crossing the Niagara River; the iron of the Victoria Tubular Bridge, at Montreal, which in its day was one of the wonders of the world, and that of

the once famous and record-breaking Atlantic liner “City of Rome.” This old material was worked over into bar iron, and was largely consumed in the construction of agricultural implements.

Verily, the fashion of this world passeth away. For many of us these great achievements of engineering skill are remembered as contemporaneous events, which seemed to mark the limitations of human effort in their several directions. As compared with the commonplaces of to-day, they are scarcely of historical interest.