ward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end."

MAN AND MACHINERY.

DISCOURSE II.

MAN AND MACHINERY.

For the spirit of the living creature was in the
wheels.--EZEKIEL, i. 20.

Whatever may have been the significance of the sublime vision from which
I have extracted those words, I do not think that their essential
meaning is perverted when I apply them to the subject which comes before
us this evening. I am not aware of any sentence that expresses more
concisely the relation which I would indicate between _Man_ and
_Machinery_; between those great agents of human achievement and the
living intelligence which works in them and by them. And though a Divine
Spirit moved in those flashing splendors which burned before the eyes of
the prophet, is it not also a divine spirit that mingles in every great
manifestation of humanity, and that moves even in the action of man,
the worker, toiling among innumerable wheels?

Perhaps if we were called upon to name some one feature of the present
age which distinguishes it from all other ages, and endows it with a
special wonder and glory, we should call it the Age of Machinery. We
trust our age is unfolding something better than material triumphs. The
results of past thought and past endeavor are pouring through it in
expanding currents of knowledge, liberty, and brotherhood. But the great
_agents_ in this diffusion of ideas and principles are those vehicles of
iron, and those messengers of lightning, which compress the huge globe
into a neighborhood, and bring all its interests within the system of a
daily newspaper. Like the generations which have preceded us, we enter
into the labors of others, and inherit the fruits of their effort. But
these powerful instruments, condensing time and space, endow a single
half-century with the possibilities of a cycle. If we take the period
comprehending the American and the French revolutions as a dividing
line, and look both sides the chasm, we shall discover the difference
of a thousand years. Remarkable for brilliant achievements in every
department of physics, ours well deserves to be called the Age of
_Science_, also. But it is still more remarkable, for the application of
the most majestic and subtle constituents of the universe to the most
familiar uses; the wild forces of matter have been caught and harnessed.
Go into any factory, and see what fin