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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 6, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 17.

“BY THE WORDS.”

THE following from a letter in the S. S. Times, and the comments thereon, are worth serious thoughts on the part of all:—

“A hollow wax cylinder, a few inches long, and marked with indentations that my eyes hardly noticed, was put on a machine, and touched in a certain way by a roller, when from a small empty funnel issued the notes of a song, sung weeks ago by one far away. I followed the melody, now soft and low, then high and intense. The words, the tone, the expression, all were on that wax cylinder, to remain imprisoned in those dots and lines, unexhaling in the air, until summoned forth, and then sounding out upon the ear in perfect facsimile of the original voice. Of course, the exhibition preached its sermon to me on the text, ‘By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.’ How emphatically does Edison’s new discovery, as well as the ‘finds’ of the archeological societies, confirm the authority of holy writ! It may be that Edison will invent a thought register next; and then how righteously we shall all have to live! Meanwhile, as we listen to the phonograph, we shall have no reason to doubt that God could frame an apparatus to lay up our words, so that all the world shall have to acknowledge to him: ‘Thou art clear when thou judgest.’”

It is true that the phonograph simply illustrates the truth of the Bible suggestion of the preservation in God’s universe of a record of our every idle word, and of the sure disclosure of all the sayings and doings of every soul brought into final judgment. And there is added force given by such disclosures as it makes, to the Bible question, “Seeing that these things are thus, . . . what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?”