Fast Times by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 19, 1870

Fast Times.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

THAT these are fast times, is agreed on every hand. Everything is done with almost lightning speed. It indicates the rapid approach of the end. The rapidity with which men travel, news is carried, and business done, is truly astonishing. Here is an item from the Cedar Rapids Times:

“ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE AGE.—On the 6th day of May, 1870, J. Sosel, Esq., mailed a letter in Cedar Rapids, containing a draft on a firm in the center of Bohemia, and on the 30th day of May the money arrived at the Post Office here, via St. Louis! Of course part of the business must have been done by telegraph, yet this does not detract from the wonderful

annihilation of time and distance which the inventions of modern times have accomplished. Think of it! Important business transacted, directly between citizens of the far West in the new world and those in the interior of the old, in the space of twenty-three days.”

What would the good people of fifty years ago have thought of such a statement? It would have been a miracle to them. Here is another statement from the Cincinnati Times, still more wonderful:

“In experimenting in London recently on telegraphy, messages were sent to Teheran, in Persia, a distance of 6700 miles, and answers were received in thirty seconds.”

In all this we see the hand of God preparing the way for his last and mighty work in the earth to be done in a brief time. May we be ready to engage in it.

D. M. CANRIGHT.