Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/346

 But these new activities in religious thought have been attended by new discoveries in philosophy and science. The provisions which the Lord made for coming to His Church were not only intended to bring about a superior state of internal and spiritual knowledge respecting the Word, religion, and its laws, but they were also designed to develop a higher condition of external and useful knowledge respecting nature and her processes. The Lord certainly desires that we should live intelligently in connection with the things of this world, as well as in reference to that which is to come. He does not wish His rational creatures to remain in darkness concerning anything He has created for their use. Every object of the outer world has impressed upon it some evidences of Divine wisdom, and surely God is wishful that men should read and learn from it those lessons it was intended to convey. Such knowledges of nature are among the orderly things in the circumference of which true religion is the centre. The one could not be evolved until the other had been brought into existence; and therefore it is that the coming of the Lord, by the opening out of new influences on His Church, has been attended by the discovery of so many new things in philosophy and science. It is amazing to think of the large amount of new information concerning nature, her phenomena, and their application to the uses of mankind, which has been made known within the last century. Every one acknowledges that there is something extraordinary in these features of our time. There is scarcely any department of knowledge that has not been rendered brilliant by new discoveries. So numerous are they that it would not be easy to give even the merest outline of them, and at the same time point out the revolution which they have effected in the social condition of the civi-