Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 308, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1916 — WORLD HELD BACK BY SIN [ARTICLE]

WORLD HELD BACK BY SIN

That Mankind Was Not Farther Advanced Centuries Ago Is Easy of Explanation. He made .' . . engines, invented by skillful men (v. 15). How he would have liked the automobile! Do you know I believe that if God’s children had been true to him from the start the world would have been as far along in Uzziah’s day as it is now. Engines, dynamos, automobiles, telephones, moving pictures, wireless and thousands more born and unborn inventions have been in man ever since God made him like himself. The trouble has been sin got in before these creations could get in. In the fullness of time Jesus Christ came to get the race back to God. After 1900 years it has gotten part way back, and behold the Godlike things man is doing. The amazing "engines invented by skillful men” come so rapidly now we can scarcely keep up. Marconi to Europe has Just .been talking to his friends in America over thousands of miles of winter sea as easily as you and I can yell across the church lot. Suppose this book of the Chronicles of the Kings had said that King Solomon at Jerusalem and Queen Makeba down in Sheba used to chat with each other In the cool of the day. Oh. you critics! What a “folk story!" But if sin had not butted in to the world dear knows what we might be doing today. No doubt all a-wing over land and sea and happy as the birds. It doth not yet appear what we shall be (Jer#>* 6:25; Gen. 5;1; Col, 3:lo).—From W. H. Ridgway’s "Busy Men’s Corner,” in the Sunday School Times.