The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862 by Various
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page 12 of 277 (04%)
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the "cloven tongues like as of fire" had appeared again, and "sat upon
each of them." It will be a strange period, and yet we shall see it. The word spoken here under the sun of mid-day, when it speaks at the antipodes, will be heard under the stars of midnight. Of the world of commerce it may be written, "There shall be no night there!" and of the ancient clock of the sun and stars, "There shall be time no longer!" When the electric wire shall stretch from Pekin, by successive India stations, to London, and from India, by leaps from island to island, to Australia, and from New York westward to San Francisco, (as has been already accomplished,) and southward to Cape Horn, and across the Atlantic, or over the Strait to St. Petersburg,--when the endless circle is formed, and the magic net-work binds continent, and city, and village, and the isles of the sea, in one,--then who will know the world we live in, for the change that shall come upon it? Time no more! Space no more! Mankind brought into one vast neighborhood! Prophesy the greater union of all hearts in this interblending of all minds. Prophesy the boundless spread of civilization, when all barriers are swept away. Prophesy the catholicity of that religion in which as many phases of a common faith shall be endured as there are climes for the common human constitution and countries in a common world! In those days men will carry a watch, not with a single face, as now, telling only the time of their own region, but a dial-plate subdivided into the disks of a dozen timepieces, announcing at a glance the hour of as many meridian stations on the globe. It will be the fair type of |
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