Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/347

 lized world. It will be enough to mention the steam engine and its application to railroads, navigation, and manufacture; analytical chemistry, and its application to the arts, laws of evidence, and agriculture; gas, and its uses in the illumination of our streets and homes; geology, and the revelations which it has made concerning the structure and antiquity of the earth; electricity and magnetism, by which the most distant nations of the world can hold instant communication with each other; improvements in the printing press, and the extraordinary development of elegant literature adapted to inform, refine, and elevate. These things are no less new and astonishing to our natural reflection than are the new sentiments of religious truth now being presented for our acceptance. Each is the result of the same Divine Providence, though acting upon different planes of the human mind. Hence they have been contemporary in their marvellous displays, the one being intended to ameliorate our condition as dwellers upon earth, and the other to advance our spiritual preparation for admission into heaven. There is an intimate connection between them; and therefore it is that the philosophy of the world is advancing when the spiritualities of the Church are being unfolded. He who originated the one is the Author of the other, and it was only when heaven obtained a freer access to men on earth that these results came to pass.

True religion is intended to be the central life with men in the world; when it declines, morality recedes, intelligence withdraws, philosophy retires, and science decays. And how clearly is all this illustrated by the state of religion as it existed in Europe a little more than a century ago! True religion being nearly dead, all those things were wanting in proper vitality. But since then, a deeper