As 1900 Dawned Editor Denit Ably Reviewed Changing Conditions and Pictured Coming Trends
From the 1938 centennial edition of The Times-Register
In 1899 when the nineteenth century with its spent force was about to fade from the picture and the twentieth century loomed upon the horizon, Editor Charles D. Denit took a backward glance at the departing century and also a forward look into the approaching years and most ably gave a picture of past and future trends. At that time he said editorially:
“Standing today upon the lofty, rugged crest of time and casting our vision backwards through the dim distant vistas of receding ages and generations, we note the departure into the shadows of an irrevocable past, of another century of the hoary traveler’s fast accumulating age.”
“Since its fateful dawn-just a hundred years ago-how many millions of our kind have come from the dark depths of the unknown, and have gone to the still darker shades of the unknown and the unknowable? At its dawn our country had just entered on its great mission of giving freedom to the king and priest ridden peoples of the world. Now she sits upon the highest pinnacle of the terrestrial universe and dictates laws and treaties for the governments of mankind, not by the power of her armies, but by the grander forces of high and moral principles.
Religion
“Then the disciples of the world’s greatest master were hurling invectives and diatribes from pulpit against pulpit-a crowd of carping, jarring, bickering sects-and intolerance of belief and practice filled men’s hearts, and wounded and weeping, love wondered forlorn and homeless.”
“Then the doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule and peoples to obey made men automatons fit for serfdom and degradation, and filled the earth with hopeless miseries of poverty and lawlessness.”
“Now old things are passing away and all things becoming anew. Old methods of thought and action, old doctrines, old ideals and ideas have given place to the inspiration of progress, of evolution and revolution,”
“We pause a moment at the threshold of the opening century and ask the thrilling, interesting question: What will it bring mankind in religion, in law, in science, in discovery, in invention, in social, political, literary and financial development?”
Advances
“Concluding from the achievements of the century that is past, and continuing the momentum and force of development in its later stages, we have assured promise of a total revolution of modern things. It will not be treading on the vocation of the ordained prophet to say that, ere it passes, the long, dark, damning, destructive, desolating, destroying reign and rule of Satan will have given way to the beneficient scepter of God’s immaculate Son.”
“The great movements in religion and government portend unmistakably the overturning of the present social, political, scientific and ethical systems.”
“The frightful orgy of human slavery has been swept into the abysmal depths where the wrecks of the decayed epochs have long been buried. Wars have practically been displaced by arbitration, save now and then a nation suffers a spasm of blood-letting and murder, and wars against liberty and love and religion prevail.”
“It is the expiring struggle of the monster Molock who has desolated the world with the sword and torch for a hundred generations.”
“We, who are the actors upon the world’s stage at the dawning of the twentieth century must align ourselves with the saving, loving forces that God has ordained for the redemption of our races and the destruction of Satan’s power, and we most humbly and devoutly offer Him our hearts and hand in the great conflict that will place His incarnate Son on the universal throne of the world. Let all of his children say amen.”
-Prepared by Lisa King
