Unparalleled Progress

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 12, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 43.

Unparalleled Progress.

IN an address delivered at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the American Board of Foreign Missions, Dr. Mark Hopkins, president of that board and ex-president of Williams College, called attention to the important events that have occurred, and the many useful inventions that have been made, during his long life, which has extended over a period of about eighty-four years. He said:—

“I remember the wars of the first Napoleon, and can feel yet the throb of excitement caused by the tardy news of his great battles. I remember the war of 1812, and the embargo, and victory of New Orleans. I remember the first steamboat and railroad and power-press, the first photograph and spectroscope, the first telegraph and telephone, and I heard the first whisper, and it was but a whisper, of the first Atlantic cable. I remember the first spinning-jenny, the first mowing machine, sewing machine, and reaper. All these I have seen so extended and applied as to increase the capabilities of the race many fold, and to make of the world that then was quite another world.”

Dr. Hopkins has witnessed the expansion of the United States from a population of 6,000,000 to nearly or quite 60,000,000, and an advance in useful, industrial arts that has been no less marked. He had grown to manhood before a single railroad existed in this country; but he has lived to see, not only a network of railroads throughout all the older States, but the continent spanned by iron rails. Never, in the history of the world, have more important events been crowded into a single life-time than have occurred during the last eighty-four years.