The world is getting better. One of the greatest evidences of it is the contrivances that men are continually bringing into use for the saving of time and energy.
Only a few years ago the cured can of meat was about the only product of the packing house. Now there are side-products that form a great asset to the business. The sinews and hoofs are made into fertilizers to bless the farmer; the joint-oils, into lubricants for the driver’s wheel; certain fats are transformed into a fair substitute for butter, oleomargarine; the horns go to the cutler’s, and the hair finds a place in the plasterer and mason’s trade. So, too, in the manufacture of most other things that the world needs, as well as in farming, fruit-growing, and the like, a greater or less saving in materials and products is effected.
The same is true in the world of labor. Time was when myriads of hands were employed in making cloth that is now produced by a fraction of the number, by the use of time-saving machinery. In all lines of the world’s work, man’s will dictates the turning out of man’s necessaries through the inventions of genius, whereas toilsome labor used to do it by sheer human strength. Great blocks of stone and other building materials had to be laboriously raised into place by a multitude of human hands; now one human finger presses a button, and harnessed electricity or steam hoists ponderous masses aloft with ease.
A given number of men can now do infinitely more towards the great task of subduing the earth than they could a few decades ago. Which, in the broader sense, is the only business of man, and the one for which the Creator put him on the earth — to subdue it, and make himself in the process.
The reason why I think that this trend of things, this tendency to conserve energy, is an evidence of the world’s getting better, is because it is more like the business of the Lord. We see all around us how this invention and that has been made to do wonderful things, how by the use of it three or four, or perchance a hundred, times the amount of time or power can now be saved over the old way, by bringing the new machine to bear. But so few of us, perhaps, ever sense the deeper significance of it all. We do not always look far enough to see the over-shadowing hand of the great Maker of the universe in it. When we do, we must see that the multitude of force-saving devices that are daily being worked out and brought into play upon the business of the world, is making the world gravitate toward the way the Lord has of doing things.
In other words, the Lord is the greatest conserver of energy there is. And his designs and methods of accomplishing things are the most perfect and energy-saving that we know of.
For, in the economy of God there is no waste.
In the economy of men there used to be a multifarious waste, now we have found out more about the nature of God’s handiwork, and so can save more time and world-force.
There is mention made in the scriptures, something about the “preparation of the Lord” in the last days. It seems to me that this tendency of the present day to conserve energy in the mighty hum of the world’s industries, and in general business, is a very noteworthy phase of “his preparation.” And it helps to bring home to our minds the fact that we must be living in that prophetic time when all things are to be “brought together in Christ.” For if it teaches anything at all, it tells us that the ways of this world of ours are becoming more like the ways of Christ. It speaks in unmistakable language that as we as earth-people improve more and more in our manner of doing our work, as well as in morals and all other phases of living and of life, we are heading for the time when the Son of God will come down on earth with us and show us a still “more excellent way” to transact our business and accomplish our purposes, as well as a wiser method of governing ourselves.
So we see this earth and its inhabitants are gradually converging toward the status of a celestial sphere. The power-conserving devices and systems that men are all the time discovering and bringing to bear upon world-problems are bringing us steadily closer to the Lord and the means he employs to effect his ends.