In 1866, in a famous...
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In 1866, in a famous speech on reform, William Gladstone declared to the English House of Commons, "You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side." That quotation or variations of it have been used innumerable times. Such a word was appropriate to the beginning of an era that assumed progress was inevitable. That thought did dominate the world for almost a century. At the height of a world depression, Chicago hosted a world's fair dubbed a "Century of Progress." A religious periodical named itself the Christian Century in the hope that the twentieth century would truly be a Christian century. That kind of optimism is worn quite thin at the present. Certainly there are people today who believe that you cannot fight the future, but for other reasons. Today the social problems of the world appear to be so huge as to be insoluble. There seems to be too much of everything -- too much crime, too much population, too much famine, too much pollution, but not too much time. Time is not on our side. Time appears as the enemy. Environmentalists give us timetables that make doomsday lurk around the corner. There is a frenzy about time as the experts scurry for solutions for the future. In the middle of all that we hear an apostolic proclamation that offers real hope. -- Huxhold
