Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/343

 education of the people which has become a characteristic of our time? Schools for this purpose, in great numbers, have sprung up in every direction. All denominations consider such institutions as parts of their establishments. Infant schools and Sunday-schools abound everywhere; and few children are permitted to go to work without some attention being paid to their education. Every country is interested in this labour of love, and in some way or other engaged in the promotion of its objects. It is a national enterprise, and grants of public money are annually made to spread wider its benefits. Teaching has become a science; and the literature of teaching is wide in its range, noble in its simplicity, and admirably adapted to interest and instruct. Every one must have noticed the wonderful improvements in the postal arrangements which have been effected, not only in this country, but throughout the world, and by which the social character of the nations has been raised to a higher condition than that which they previously enjoyed. The rigidity of some of the bigoted tests which have hampered and hindered the progress of education af our national universities has been relaxed, and public efforts and opinion are still pressing to render them more tolerant and useful to the general public: while a mitigation of the severity of the criminal laws of all nations proves with great decision the improved tone of public morals, and the growing respect for the value of human life. All these are new features belonging to modern civilization: they are peculiarities of the century in which we live. Whence did they originate? They did not create themselves; something must have prompted the human mind to their execution; and it must be confessed that as works of benevolence they are the Lord's doings, and the results of some special coming on His part to our race.