These have been remarkable, phenomenal, and without parallel in the history of the world. The people of a century and a quarter ago knew nothing of steamships, steam and electric railways, telegraphs, telephones, photographs, phonographs, sewing-machines, anesthetics, submarine cables, linotypes, monotypes, motion pictures, X-rays, aeroplanes, or wireless telegraphy. Were they to be raised from the dead, they would be as much astonished at all these things as would the people of four thousand years ago. NOTES.—“Of a verity, this is the age of invention.”—_Scientific American._ “The great facts of the nineteenth century stand out so conspicuously above the achievements of any preceding century that it would be affectation of humility not to recognize and speak of them.”—_Union Hand-*book, 1870._ “The most striking characteristic of our times is the rapid strides which the world is making in science, general intelligence, and inventions.”—_Chicago Republican, March 14, 1872._ “Never was there such activity of invention within the history of mankind as at the present day.”—_Phrenological Journal, April, 1871._ “More has been done, richer and more prolific discoveries have been made, grander achievements have been realized, in the course of the fifty years of our lifetime than in all the previous lifetime of the race.”—_London Spectator._ Some of the principal inventions and discoveries of modern times are the following:— The balloon in 1798. Gas for lighting purposes in 1798. Cast-iron plow in 1800. Steel pen in 1803. Steamboat in 1807. Steam printing-press in 1811. Revolver in 1818. Railroad-cars in 1825. Lucifer-match in 1829. Reaper and mower in 1833. Electric telegraph in 1837. Electrotyping in 1837. Photography in 1839. Sewing-machine in 1846. Anesthesia by ether in 1846. Anesthesia by chloroform in 1847. Submarine cable in 1851. Gatling gun in 1861. Monitor war-ship in 1862. Typewriter in 1868. Automatic air-brake in 1872. Telephone in 1876. Phonograph in 1877. Electric railway in 1879. Modern seismograph in 1880. Linotype in 1885. Steam-turbine in 1888. Roentgen or X-ray in 1895. Wireless telegraphy in 1895. Motion pictures in 1895. Monotype in 1896. Radium in 1902. Aeroplane, first successful flying, Dec. 17, 1903. It will be noticed that none of these inventions antedate 1798. Go back a little over a century and we find the world about where it was in the days of the patriarchs. For thousands of years there seemed to be scarcely any advancement or improvement in knowledge. But suddenly with the opening of the nineteenth century, the world awoke from its long sleep, and a new era dawned,—the time of the end, when knowledge was to be increased. 5. What did the Saviour say should precede the end?