Now that he is gone let us look around and see what he has left behind him. He has made his impression, men say. Yes, and he has left impressions, also. Here is one of them: It is that the regular pastor, to whose zeal and faithfulness the whole work must be indebted if it is to abide and amount to anything, as a servant and workman of the Lord, is very inferior to the stranger who made such a stir during the few weeks of his sojourn. The impression obtains in the church that they need not expect conversions under the regular ministry, but must await the coming of another Evangelist. The result is the lessening of the pastor’s influence in his church and community, and the education of the people to expect no more than a “tiding over” of the church till the time of another effort under similar leadership.
But not alone the church is educated to so think and expect, but the education reaches the minister also, and when this is so the result is simply deplorable. Bishop R. S. Foster in a recent address to a conference class has so well and truthfully expressed this result that we give his words: “It has become common in these days to say of preachers, ‘this is a revival preacher, and this is not.’ There is great harmfulness in the suggestion, for we tend to arrange ourselves around this point: We will be of the revival class, or not of the revival; as if any ministry dare to be anything but a revival ministry; as if a man could be a minister without this power of the Holy Ghost. We must set out to make ourselves revival preachers, working preachers, that will make sinners feel the power of the truth. And perhaps at this point I may say that it will be well for us to take time and consider the field, for it has become a popular idea for us to supplement our ministry by calling in other people to help us out, by employing evangelists, irresponsibles, running over the land, and burning it to a cinder in many places, asking them to come in and do the work God expects us to do.” If any one offers as an objection or protest against the above views the question, “What of Mr. Moody and others of signal success in this field of work?” we answer that when to the name of Moody is added a few others the list of their kind is exhausted. So we cite the proverb, “The exception proves the rule.”
THE NEW TIME STANDARDS.
One of our humorists has wittily depicted the blank astonishment of ocean voyagers whose watches, “never out of order at home,” utterly failed, as their owners journeyed to eastern lands, to keep pace with the flight of time. Each noon as the vessel’s officers made their observations and set their chronometers with the advanced meridian reached, found the passengers’ “Frodshams” lagging rearward. A matter, however, easily explained. Time is regulated by the sun. Wherever the sun is on a north and south line, or meridian, at that place it is noon, and the time obtained by such an observation (to say nothing of the equation of time) is “local” time. As, then, the vessel moved east, each day it met the sun (or rather the sun reached the meridian) earlier than on the day preceding, and all the watches and clocks had to be put ahead just as many minutes as equaled the number of minutes of longitude made by the vessel. In sailing west, the sun would arrive at the meridian later each day, and time-pieces would be too fast, and would have each day to be correspondingly “turned back.”
Of course, the same thing occurs on land. If we travel east our watches become too slow; if west, too fast; and the traveler is constantly occupied comparing his local time with those of the places he visits and of the trains on which he is carried. If in Pittsburgh, he finds western trains running by Columbus time, twelve minutes slower than Pittsburgh; eastern trains via Pennsylvania Central R. R., nineteen minutes faster; and eastern trains on the Baltimore and Ohio road fourteen minutes faster—just four standards for one city.
After some fourteen years of discussion among scientists and railroad men, an expedient has been finally adopted by which one clock will exhibit the “time” of the whole world. And it is simply this: Since by the earth’s revolution on its axis, any (all) point on the earth’s surface passes through 360° every twenty-four hours, or at the rate of 15° each hour, the surface can be divided into twenty-four sections, each 15° of arc, or one hour of time, in breadth, having for its standard time, the time of its (the section’s) middle meridian. This makes the difference in time between any two adjacent sections exactly one hour. Thus, if at Greenwich it is noon, from 7½° to 22½° west of Greenwich it is only 11:00 a. m., while in the section included by the meridians 7½° to 22½° east, it is 1:00 p. m. Or, when it is 3:25 p. m. at Greenwich, it is 2:25 and 4:25 p. m. respectively in the sections directly west and east of the Greenwich section; and 1:25 and 5:25 p. m. respectively in the next adjoining sections; and so on. Now applying this principle to our own country, we have the following scheme:
| Meridian Standard. | Local time compared with Greenwich time. | Boundaries of Sections. | Name of time. | |||
| 60° W. | 4 | hours | slow. | 52½° to | 67½° W. | Atlantic. |
| 75° W. | 5 | “ | “ | 67½° to | 82½° W. | Eastern. |
| 90° W. | 6 | “ | “ | 82½° to | 97½° W. | Valley or Central. |
| 105° W. | 7 | “ | “ | 97½° to | 112½° W. | Mountain. |
| 120° W. | 8 | “ | “ | 112½° to | 127½° W. | Pacific. |
From which it is readily seen we have but five instead of over fifty standards as heretofore; and that the time of any place can not vary more than thirty minutes from its own local time.
It is proposed that places located between the meridians given in the column headed “Boundaries of Sections,” shall adopt the time named in the same line in the next right hand column headed “Name of Time;” for example, places located between the meridians 67½ and 82½ west will adopt “Eastern” time, which is the local time of the 75th meridian, and is five hours slower than Greenwich and eight minutes 12.09 seconds faster than Washington time. It is not supposed, however, that this will be done as exactly as laid down in the table; for a railroad may be located principally in one section and extend a short distance into another; in which case it would not be worth while to change the standard for the short part. Thus, the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway has its eastern terminus in Pittsburgh, something over 100 miles east of the Central section, in which the main body of the road lies; and this road adopts Central time throughout its whole extent. In like manner, San Antonio and Austin, Texas, are both in the “Mountain” section, but will probably prefer to adopt “Central” time and be respectively thirty-three and thirty-one minutes slower, than to adopt “Mountain” time and be respectively twenty-seven and twenty-nine minutes faster than their local time; and this for the obvious reason that their business connections are much more extensive with the Central than the Mountain region. But these cases do not in the least interfere with the integrity of the general scheme. The minute-hands of all properly regulated time-pieces will always indicate the same minute, and all “times” can be estimated by the addition or subtraction of entire hours. And in this lies the beauty and simplicity of the device.
With great unanimity the railroads of the United States, and most of the principal cities of the Union have already and without a “jar” adjusted their business to this new basis; and it is to be presumed that as soon as the advantages are fully understood, some cities that are now hesitating will fall into line. The fact is, that while the adoption of the new plan would produce a wonderful uniformity, there would be a few cases in which the disturbance of local time seems great; but it is not any greater than in hundreds of cases where the old method is used. To exhibit the changes we give a few samples: In New Orleans the time is fourteen seconds slower than local time; in St. Louis, forty-nine seconds slower; in Denver, no difference; in Philadelphia, 38.45 seconds slower; in New York, three minutes 58.38 seconds faster; in Baltimore, six minutes slower; in Washington City, eight minutes twelve seconds slower; while in Kansas City the time is eighteen minutes 21.7 seconds slower; in Pittsburgh, twenty minutes three seconds faster; in Cincinnati, twenty-two minutes 18.58 seconds faster; and in Omaha, twenty-four minutes slower than the respective local times.