THOMAS A. EDISON, in a recent newspaper interview, said: "The times are too serious to talk or think in terms of Republicanism or Democracy. Real Americans must drop parties, and get down to big fundamental principles." And, speaking of the last two or three years, he says the nation "has been faced with a succession of tremendous problems." Another sentence from his interview, speaking of recent years, says, "I have never known so many dangerous questions brought up for decision." Mr. Edison recognizes what any serious-minded person in these times sees all too clearly, and that is that these times are very much out of joint. The ordinary course of world events has given place to events and conditions of extraordinary and calamitous portent. These conditions that are all about us in such alarming proportions are just what the students of prophecy have been looking for and warning the world against for the last fifty or sixty years. Men using the philosophy of history, which is another way of speaking of the precedents afforded by former times, are endeavoring to tell us what we may expect in the near future. But the conditions of the world to-day have no precedent whatever. The last hundred years, through scientific achievement and mechanical invention, has made another world out of this altogether, so far as its material developments are concerned; and the problems of to-day cannot be judged by any precedent from former times. We are, so far as the people of the world are concerned, sailing to-day on unknown and uncharted seas. The only charts that give us any clue to what the future has in store for us are the great charts of prophecy. The only light that is to-day shining into the future is that illumination of prophecy which the scripture tells us is as "a light that shineth in a dark place." The great mass of humanity is doomed to be deceived and destroyed, not because such must necessarily be the case, but because men will insist upon blindly following their own impulses and their own iniquitous career. God has a way of escape from the evils and dangers of this time, and every individual may avail himself of it who will. These times are too serious, and freighted with too important issues, for us to take any chances. Men should seek to the old Book to-day as never before. They should stand under its clear light, that the pitfalls of the time may be seen and avoided.