TO MECCA BY RAILROAD by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 26, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 42.

TO MECCA BY RAILROAD.

By Editor

A CURRENT press item says that the Hejaz Railroad, to connect Damascus with Mecca, is to be a religious line. It will convey pilgrims to Mecca over the most difficult stretch of their pilgrimage, and hence its completion will be hailed by the faithful with the wildest enthusiasm. Mohammedans all over the East are contributing with generosity, and the original idea was to have none but Mohammedan materials and workmanship enter into its construction and management, so that the holiest might use it without defilement. But that had to be given up, because Mohammedanism does not produce steel rails, locomotives, or engineers; so the road will be a triumph to Christian brains, while it carries Mohammedan bodies. The increase of knowledge and inventive power in the last days is of no benefit to mankind, but rather the reverse, if these be not utilized for the glory of God, who gives the wisdom.

The perversion of the inventive genius with which the Lord has endowed human beings, for the furtherance of His glorious cause, is in keeping with the perversion of His truth—the law and the Gospel—which are designed to save men and bring them into harmony with God and His universal government. The railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, and the printing-press are all mighty instrumentalities for the spread of the Gospel message to the world; but the enemy of souls is quicker to employ them for his destructive purposes than professed Christians are to utilize them in a legitimate way.