Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/348

 and more rational sense of spiritual religion has been unfolded; and this, as a centre, has induced the production of new things in the circumference; for the Divine light, which is the Divine truth, diffuses itself around, reducing all things to order, and out of that order it evolves new activities of use in the world. The existence of those activities, and the advantages which have and are still resulting from them, clearly prove to our minds that we are living in a new age, the marvellous improvements of which have caused it to become a proverb in the history of the world. To what can these achievements be attributed? To say that they have sprung out of the activity of the human mind does not, as we have said, meet the question, because we shall still have to ask, How did that activity originate? How did it happen that no such activity was displayed in the preceding century? And how has it come to pass that this activity has been so largely developed, almost within the memory of living men? These questions can only be answered by admitting the fact that the mind has been acted upon by an influence extraneous to itself. And the primal cause of all the advantages to which we have adverted must be referred to Him from whom all goodness comes. They can only be intelligently accounted for by regarding them as the outpourings of a wise and benevolent spirit upon mankind, and thus as effects resulting from the fulfilment of the Lord's promise to come again. Those marvellous effects are to the age of His second coming what His miracles were to the time of hs first advent. The latter were outer wonders—wonders to the senses; the former are inner wonders—wonders to the intellect. They have all come into being within the period to which we assign the second coming of the Lord, and that event was publicly declared to the world before any of those