Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/173

 schools. Schools and colleges do not increase human capac- ity, but they do make mental exercise more general, and hence help to develop the capacity already possessed. As knowledge becomes more general and books more common, the generations possessing these have a decided advantage over previous generations ; not only in that there are now a thousand thinkers to one formerly, to sharpen and stim- ulate each other with suggestions, but also in that each of the later generations has, through books, the combined ex- perience of the past in addition to its own. Education and the laudable ambition which accompanies it, enterprise, and a desire to achieve distinction and a competency, aided by the record and descriptions of inventions in the daily press, have stimulated and brightened man's perceptive powers, and put each upon the alert to discover or to invent, if pos- sible, something for the good and convenience of society. Hence we suggest that modern invention, looked at from a purely human standpoint, teaches, not an increase of brain capacity, but a sharpened perception from natural causes.

And now we come to the Scriptures to see what they teach on the subjedl; for while we believe, as suggested above, that invention and the increase of knowledge, etc., among men are the results of natural causes, yet we believe that these natural causes were all pknned and ordered by Jehovah God long ago, and that in due time they have come to pass by his overruling providence, whereby he "work- eth all things after the counsel of his own will." (Eph, i : n.) According to the plan revealed in his Word, God purposed to permit sin and misery to misrule and oppress the world for six thousand years, and then in the seventh millennium to restore all things, and to extirpate evil destroying it and its consequences by Jesus Christ, whom he hath afore ordained to do this work. Hence, as the six thousand years of the reign of evil began to draw to a close.

�� �