The World as an Ordinary Neighborhood.
DURING recent weeks the new ocean steam-ship Lusitania has been kept much before the public mind. She has greatly lowered the record of speed in crossing the Atlantic, and enjoys the distinction of being the largest and most luxurious and comfortable palace of the seas. The same company started her sister ship, the Mauretania, on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic from Queenstown, on November 17. Eleven hours after she had sailed she was reported to be 265 miles out to sea, and other despatches from day to day tell her whereabouts in the ocean. This knowledge of her location on the great ocean is made possible by the wireless telegraph apparatus that she carries. Thus has it come about in these times that not only are all the corners of the earth kept in constant daily, and even hourly, touch with each other by telegraphic facilities, but even the ships at sea are in unbroken communication with the land; thus are the doings of men both by land and sea a matter of daily knowledge. Thus has the whole world been made a single neighborhood in this marvelous age in which we dwell. There is a wonderful significance in all these things, for the Lord has given the promise in His word that the message of the second coming of Christ shall be heard in all the world. The prophecies all point to the fact that we are now living in the last days, and that the second coming of Christ is imminent. And were there no promises to show it, the fact should be apparent to any one that the Lord would not allow such a great event as this to come upon the world without a warning concerning it being given to every individual in every corner of the globe. But the Lord has given the clear promise that He will give every person on the whole face of the earth the opportunity to know that the joyous event of the second coming of His Son is soon to be a soul-absorbing reality. And how marvelously complete are the facilities of communication that make it possible for all the dwellers on all the earth to get promptly the latest facts and developments that make it plain that His coming is nigh at hand! Even the sea-faring man that spends most of his life on the billowy deep may know from day to day the tokens that should tell him of the approaching dawn of the eternal day.