The wonders of prophecy ; or, what are we to believe?

Front matter

Class _i

Book M

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

CHAPTER II. — Can the Question be An5.*vei*/j>?

Certainty sometimes attained — Bishop Newton jmd Marshal Wade — The future completely hid from human view — What is proved if the future has nevertheless been fully read ? . . . . . , 8

CHAPTER., III. — Predictions Regarding 1 yle and Sidon: *.-.

Illustration of the kind of evidence available : *he Stones, and Dust of Tyre to be laid in the S';a — We limit oiirselves to Prophecies fulfilled at and smce the beginning of the Christian era — Tyre to be built no more — Sidon to continue but to suffer — What if tne two Names had changed places? .. .. 15

CHAPTER IV. — Predictions Regarding Egypt

Fate of Thebes — Egypt's Doom of Decline — The Kingdom not to be Extinguished — Its Degradation — To have no Native Ruler . . . . . . . . 22

CHAPTER V. — Predictions Regarding Egypt. (Continued.)

Fate of Memphis — The Rivers and the Canals of Egypt — The Verdure on the River Banks — The Fisheries of Egypt — Its remaining Industries — The Desolation of the surrounding Countries — The Desolation of Egypt itself — The Character of its Masters — -Their Nationality — Their Work — Summary . . . . 44

IV CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI. — Idumea and the Sea-Coast of Palestine

The Commerce of Idumea to cease — The Race to become extinct — The Land to be a Desolation — The Doom of the Philistines — The Remnant of the Sea- Coast to be Destroyed — The Country to be Desolate, while its Fruitfulness is to remain — The Present Aspect of the Land and the Purpose which it serves described in Prophecy — Predictions regarding Ascalon, Ekron, and Gaza , . , , . , . . 93

CHAPTER VII.— Judea and Babylon

The cessation of the Jewish Worship, and the desolation of the Jewish sanctuaries — The Israelites uprooted from the land — Their enemies to dwell in it — Its cities to be a waste and the land a desolation — The duration of the desolation — Judea to be a land of pilgrimages — The doom of Bethel, of Samaria, of Capernaum, and of Jerusalem — Fate of Mount Moriah and of Zion — The destruction of the Temple and the continued oppression of Jerusalem — Julian's attempt to defeat the prophecy — Babylon: Its desolation to be utter and lasting — The process of its demolition described — A burnt mountain — To become the prey of many nations — All that spoil her to be satisfied — The awful desolation of Chaldea .. .. in

CHAPTER VIII. — A Prophetic Forecast of the World's Entire History

The Book of Daniel — Supposed critical triumph — Nebuchadnezzar's dream — Interpretation of the parable^ — The four empires named in Scripture — The Roman to be the last merely human world-dominion — The character of the fourth kingdom— Its novelty, terribleness, strength, and tyranny — The division of the empire — Its continuance — The number of its fragments — A miracle of insight: The childhood, boyhood, youth, manhood, and old age of history ,. 151

CONTENTS. V

CHAPTER IX. — Prophecies Fulfilled in the Coming, the History, and the Work of Christ

The age of the Old Testament writings — The Messianic prophecies — The nations to cast away their idols — The revolution to be the work of one man — And He to be a Jew — The time of His death predicted — His history foretold — His lowliness and poverty — Rejected by Israel — Dies by violence, and under a judicial sentence — His work described — He lives and saves . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

CHAPTER X. — Predictions Fulfilled in the History of the Jews

Their importance — The Jews' rejection of Jesus — Its long continuance — Their punishment — The instruments of it — The mercilessness of the instruments of vengeance — The Jews to be taken back to Egypt "in ships" — Characteristics of the war: its sieges; the method of attack — The Jews to suffer the extremities of famine, and to be left few in number — Their universal dispersion — Their preservation — Their separateness — Their treatment in the lands of their sojourn — To be compelled to pollute themselves with idolatry — To have no rest — To be deprived of any central government — To be deprived of sacrifice, and holy-place, and priest — Conclusion .. ,. ..215

Chapter I. A Serious Question

It is sometimes asked in petulant indolence. The writer has a vivid recollection of its being put by a rather feeble, and not very worthy, member of a country church. He possessed a copy of "Brown's Bible/' and it was a favourite exercise with him to spend Sunday afternoon in comparing the exposition he had heard in the morning with the remarks in the commentary. These did not always agree, and disagreement was never noted without annoyance. One Sunday there chanced to be a more than ordinarily wide divergence. The minister happened to call a day or two afterwards, and, having spent his strength in explaining and defending the position he had dared to take in defiance of "Brown," he was rewarded by the exclamation : "What are we to believe !"

It might be well for all men, and it would certainly be more agreeable to many, were there no divergent opinions. But it is not well for any man, when he discovers that all do not think alike, to faint amid the strife of tongues and to "throw the whole thing up." There are few truths which have not had to run the gauntlet of controversy ; and those truths are our possession to-day solely because there happened to be men who, while thev loved peace, would not part with conviction though the holding to it meant war. Science as well as faith has had its martyrs. They were brave

2 A SERIOUS QUESTION.

enough to leave the beaten track in search of truth; and, when they found it, they were not to be frightened from their possession by the chorus of doubt and condemnation with which they were assailed. That man will do little in the world who can be terrified by clamour, or who surrenders convictions because all are not agreed as to their truth. The manly man feels that, in such differences, there is a call to inquire and to make his own decision. The rest, though it pains one to say it, are no great loss. The wind that sweeps across the threshing-floor takes only the chaff away; or, if it take with it too the light, withered, heartless, grain, the wheat that is left clean and sound is all the worthier of the garner.

Were such the only lips to ask the question we might pass it lightly by. But it is sometimes asked in despair. There is many a tragedy in these last days which never gets into the newspapers ; which is played out to the bitter end in obscurity and silence ; which no eye witnesses, and neither tongue nor pen relates. Let us glance at a few typical instances. A lad leaves a northern village, in which he had been born and brought up, for one of our large southern cities. He has come from a pious home where impressions had been made which fond parents hoped would be an abiding protection against the temptations which he went forth to meet. And at first it was so. He sought and found, in his new home, associations similar to those with which he had so long been familiar. He breathed a kindred social, intellectual, and spiritual atmosphere. He was found at prayer-meetings, and he rejoiced in young men's religious societies. Between him and heresy, or unbelief, there lay a great gulf of pious horror, which shut off all communication, and which, one would have imagined, effectually disposed of any dread of infection.

Some years passed and then there came a change. He began to read. The pleasures of "the Pierian

TRIALS OF EARLY FAITH. 3

spring" allured him on. He wandered in new, and hitherto undreamt of, fields. And, as the centre of interest changed its place, there was a corresponding transfer of affection. The old resorts were less frequented. The limitations of old companionships became painfully apparent. They were judged of more by what they lacked than by what they had.

By-and-bye another stage was reached. His reading had hitherto been of a colourless character so far as Christianity was concerned. But now in the course of his journeying he lighted upon a country whose thought and speech were diverse from all he had hitherto known. The beliefs which he had till then cherished were regarded with pitying contempt, or were spoken of as if no sane man could have patience with them. All this he read with pain, but also with increasing curiosity. There must surely be some grounds, real or supposed, for the position which was assumed. What were they ? From Matthew Arnold he passed to the Leben Jesu of David Frederic Strauss. The deadlier potion seemed at first less objectionable than the other. It was a relief to turn from the pretentiousness of Arnold to the studied fairness and the transparent frankness of Strauss. But it was still a thorny pathway. With grief and deepening sadness, one conviction after another was laid aside, till all were buried in a grave for which it seemed no resurrection morn was possible. It was a terrible awaking. The holy tenderness and glowing hopes of his earlier faith died as the day dies when the sun has sunk beneath the western horizon. Deep darkness settled down on past, present, and future. He wrote to a friend "I have ceased to believe in Christ, Christianity, or the Bible."

Part of another life-drama was enacted in the same city, a few years earlier. It was that of a youth from another district and with a very different preparation for the struggle. No religious training had either biased or blessed his boyhood. Religion belonged to a

4 A SERIOUS QUESTION.

world with which he had nothing whatever to do, and with which he desired no closer connection. He had gone to church just as he had gone to school, from compulsion rather than choice, and the Sunday exercises had made still less impression than the other. He must have heard the texts given out ; and, though his thoughts were wandering far away, he must have heard parts at least of many a sermon ; but they were remembered quite as little as the humming of the bees in the fields, through which he passed to reach his home.

A guest came one evening, who, for lack of better accommodation, had to share the boy's bedroom, and the stranger seized the opportunity to speak to him about that of which he had never thought — his soul. The result could not have been encouraging to the good man, and the circumstance was long remembered by the subject of his solicitude with anything but gratitude. Why people should take such dire offence at plain dealing in this of all matters — why they should be more indignant at the question whether they are bound for heaven than at the inquiry whether they think of going to New Zealand, is a matter which philosophers have yet to explain.

Some time after his arrival in the city, conscience began to assert itself ; but to religion he was as indifferent as ever. A friend of the people, with whom he boarded, used occasionally to spend an evening with him and them. He was a Secularist, and belief in the existence of God was argued against and scoffed at. The youth was unable to refute the arguments advanced, but he recoiled from the dark abyss of Atheism. The story is told of a lady who, having fallen into a trance and having been buried alive, regained consciousness as the grave-digger, who had afterwards unearthed the supposed corpse, was severing a finger in order to obtain the ring which had been left upon it. And so the attempt to rob him of this last conviction seemed to arouse his long-slumbering

MINISTERIAL DIFFICULTIES. 5

mental and moral nature. The question was now eagerly asked which had never passed those lips before — "What are we to believe ?" An advertisement regarding The Defender, a periodical edited by Dr. Rutherford, of Newcastle, was noticed. The magazine was regularly purchased and eagerly read. It met his need. A spirit that was willing to believe if it only could, was, so to speak, taken by the hand and led onward into brightening light.

We may cite one case more. Two clergymen, stationed in a University town, are walking out into the country, as they often do, on Monday morning. Both are young men and in their first pastorates, the elder of the two having had a couple of years' more experience of ministerial life than his companion. There is a sadness, however, in this morning's conversation. In the confidence of a very sincere and close friendship, the elder is relating some of his difficulties. He professes himself unable any longer to accept the ordinary representations of the Atonement. His friend is sympathetic but astonished. To him everything is clear. He refers to one passage of Scripture after another, but the other is neither convinced nor helped.

A few years have passed. The friends are now separated by distance, but the younger has reason to remember that morning's conversation. He comprehends the doubts to-day, the strength and misery of which were hid from him a year or two ago. The ground is now slipping from beneath his own feet. He has been increasingly attracted to a literature, the one grand dogma of which is the Fatherhood of God. It was a belief which, as he grasped it, had more of sentiment than of strength, but it had become to him practically the whole evangel. Deductions are sometimes made slowly even by a logical mind, but once made they are bound on the soul with bands of iron. Looked at from the new standpoint, old beliefs lost their reasonableness, and even their credibility. His

6 A SERIOUS QUESTION.

faith in the central doctrine of the Scripture went as completely as his friend's had formerly done.

He did his work as best he could ; but he was not at rest. The gospel message, as he now viewed it, had lost much of its urgency. There was an uneasy feeling, too, that he was at war with the Book which he professed to accept wholly, and all the counsels of which he acknowledged it his duty to declare. Then there came to him a period of enforced leisure. He had time to look back upon the past, to weigh his work, to judge his life. The retrospect seemed ghastly. He asked himself what had been the outcome of his toil, and confessed that the answer, if stated truly, was — a salary. Measured by spiritual result it was nothing, and less than nothing. He was interested in the special truth on which he might happen to preach on the Sunday, and he believed that the people were also interested ; but, when Monday came, he and they were just where they had been before. The studying and preaching led neither him nor them to anything that satisfied and saved. Theirs was a wandering, not a progress. Then came a time of terrible darkness, and of soul wrestling. But there was hope in the ordeal, for the wrestling was, like his of old, a wrestling with God. Light dawned, and it found him humbled and willing to be led. It gave him a truer hold on Christ, a deeper and more childlike trust in God's word. He still serves, and not without result. The other lies to-day in a suicide's grave.

These are no fancy sketches ; they are photographs. They remind us in how many ways and by how many lips this question is being asked — what are w r E to believe? Is there any answer? Is there anything which will put dark doubts to rest, and leave the heart with certainty and God? The old ideas regarding inspiration are not, generally speaking, the ideas of to-day. "Verbal inspiration" is spoken of as a contradiction in terms, and rejected as a superstition and an absurdity. The clear and sharply-defined defence of

CAN OLD POSITIONS BE MAINTAINED? J

former times has given place to wavering and apology. We are told that the language of scripture is not to be too closely pressed. We are taught rather to expect mistakes in science and in history, till we begin to wonder wherein the inspiration of the Bible lies. Is there anything which will settle these questions — - which will show whether we have a Book that is not man's but God's, and which will prove once for all how its words are to be taken ? I believe there is.

Chapter II. Can The Question Be Answered?

We can imagine no graver position than that o± the man who takes his seat in the Jury-box at a criminal trial. He is bound by his oath and by his duty to his country, not only "to well and truly try," but also to declare his judgment. It is his to decide whether he shall brand a man with lasting infamy and crush the hearts of parents, wife, children, friends, beneath a load which nothing can remove. He is asked to say whether a man, whose good name, liberty, and life, are as sacred as his own, shall be consigned to years of a stern and terrible prison discipline, or, it may be, to death at the hands of the executioner.

And yet it sometimes happens that one piece of evidence impresses the mind of the Jury with such overwhelming conviction that they cannot hesitate, though the gravest of all issues depends upon their decision. A large employer of labour, for example, has been found dead on the way to his own home. The cause of death was a gun-shot wound, and it was evident that he had been murdered. One of his workmen, whom he had discharged after a personal altercation, is suspected, and placed upon his trial. The quarrel, and the consequent

CERTAINTY SOMETIMES ATTAINED. g

discharge are proved. Witnesses also testify that the prisoner threatened to be revenged; that he was seen in the neighbourhood at the time of the murder; and that a gun, which had been recently fired, was found in his house. So far there is ground for strong suspicion. But, when it is proved that the wadding used in loading the gun was found in an adjacent hedge, was unrolled, and discovered to be part of a letter addressed to the prisoner, and that the letter itself, from which the piece had been torn, was found in his possession, suspicion becomes certainty. Both parts are laid before the Jury, and in that moment every hope of the murderer's escape vanishes. Have we anything in the whole range of the Christian evidences which will prove the claims of Scripture as convincingly as the fragments of the letter prove the man's guilt ? I believe we have. I believe the evidence placed in our hands by the fulfilled predictions of Scripture does more.

In the dedication to his book on the, Prophecies, 'Bishop Newton refers to some conversations he had with Marshal Wade. The latter laughed at the alleged proof of Christianity from the fulfilment of prophecy, and all argument was set aside with the observation that the predictions were written after the events. The Bishop urged in reply that there were several prophecies wdiich were not fulfilled till recent times, and several more which were beyond doubt written centuries before the events happened. The Marshal was startled, "and said he must acknowledge that, if this point could be proved to satisfaction, there would be no argument against such plain matter of fact; it would certainly convince him, and, he believed, would be the readiest way to convince every reasonable man of the truth of revelation."

That judgment is one which all must endorse. If it is possible to produce evidence pf the kind referred to by Bishop Newton, then the inspiration of the Scrip-

10 CAN THE QUESTION BE ANSWERED?

tures is no longer open to doubt, nor is the existence of Him from whom they are said to have come. As this is a point of such vast importance let us

WEIGH THE ARGUMENT

for a moment. None have better information in regard to our own families than we ourselves possess. We know the present condition and the past history of each member of them. We are aware of the circumstances which will largely influence their future, and we see even now how these circumstances are likely to affect them. Say, then, that we are asked to go forward in thought only ten years, and to state distinctly what the condition of each member of the family will be at the end of that time ; to say who will be alive, if any ; who, if any, dead ; in what place each will then be residing ; who will be in prosperous circumstances, who in circumstances the reverse. How should we meet the demand? Should we entertain the questions seriously* even for a moment ? Much as we do know, none but a madman or a fool could suppose us capable of resolving such points as these.

Again : we all have some acquaintance with the city, town, or place, in which we dwell. We can say whether there is promise of increased population and prosperity, or whether a decrease of both is threatened. But, thoroughly as we know the place and its prospects, will any one of us venture to leave the region of opinion and surmise, and speak minutely and positively of what its condition will be a hundred years hence? Or, to take another illustration: there are men now guiding the destinies of Europe who have studied politics for half a century. Many of them have had long and accurate knowledge of the tendencies and resources of the various countries, and of the dangers which threaten them from without and from within.

THE FUTURE HID FROM HUMAN VIEW. II

Ask the man, who has the keenest vision of them all, what will be the condition at the close of the next half century of India, or Germany, or France, or Great Britain. Ask whether Switzerland, for example, will then retain her independence, or have been seized by one of her bigger neighbors, and in the latter event, by which. Suppose these questions gravely put, and gravely entertained, will not the answer be, that the things which we wish to know lie far beyond the range of the keenest sight possessed by man — that the wisest, though he may shrewdly conjecture, cannot write a single page, nor pen a single line, of the story of the future ?

It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to emphasize this by further illustrations. But literature abounds with proofs of how completely, notwithstanding all we say about insight and foresight, the future is hid from us. Malte Brun in his description of Prussia, says that "from its proximity to Russia it must be in many respects a secondary power" little anticipating the political developments of present times. "It is curious," Henry Greville writes under date March 20, 1848, "that Lord Hardinge, who arrived here on Thursday, passed two hours at Vienna, and saw Metternich, who spoke of passing events without the slightest apprehension, and said that it was possible there might be some disturbances in different parts of the Empire, but that they would be put down without any difficulty, and that he had no intention of making any concessions at this time. Four days afterwards lie was obliged to fly from Vienna, and his house was sacked and burnt."*

Instances of similar blindness might easily be multiplied, but I mention three only which have a common bearing on one of the greatest events of modern times

* Leaves from the Dairy of Henry Greville, Vol. I., p. 243.

12 CAN THE QUESTION BE ANSWERED?

— the regeneration of Italy. Macaulay concludes his, essay on Machiavelli with the words: "In the church of Santa Croce a monument was erected to his memory . . . . which will be approached with still deeper homage when the object to which his public life zvas devoted shall be attained, zvhen the foreign yoke shall be broken, when a second Procida shall avenge the wrongs of Naples, when a happier Rienzi shall restore the good estate of Rome, when the streets of Florence and Bologna shall again resound with their ancient war-cry, 'Popolo; popolo; mnoiano i tiranni! " This was written in 1827. Who knew that in the days of men then living all these aspirations would be fulfilled — that every tyrant should have fled, and that the land be no more darkened with the shadow of an oppressor?

In 185 1, Mr. Gladstone published his letter regarding the condition of Naples. Between twenty and thirty thousand political prisoners lay crowded together in the fortresses and jails. No man raised his voice on behalf of liberty, or even fell under suspicion of holding liberal opinions, but was sent into exile or cast into a dungeon. Mr. Gladstone published his indignant appeal to the public opinion of Europe, thinking, perhaps, that the Neapolitan Government might be shamed into humanity, but seeing no other hope for a cruelly oppressed people. Who could have foreseen that before another ten years had passed that land should be free — free as it had not been for ages ; and that a fugitive from his beloved Italy, then wandering on the far-distant shores of America, was the man through whom the deliverance should come? Who was then able, with his hand upon these facts, to warn the tyrant, or to console the down-trodden ?

The last and not least startling instance, which I cite, of man's ignorance of the future, is found in a letter written on the eve of Italy's complete deliverance As

THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS. 1 3

late as the Spring of 1866 George A. Sala wrote as follows regarding Venice : "When is the day of her deliverance to come, and when are the tears which, with but twelve months' intermission, have flowed for half a century, to be dried ? She waits and waits, and the Italians wait too, clenching their hands, and grinding their teeth. ... It is impossible to cross the frontier, or to be half-an-hour in the Austro- Venetian territory, without becoming aware that the Austrian 'Autograph' — as Mr. Thackeray called the doubleheaded eagle — has got a very tight grip of the country. . . As he is a very powerful eagle, strong on the wing and adamantine in the talons, the contingency of his giving up his Venetian quarry is, to say the least, remote. It is not impossible."* To these words he has appended the following note: "This was written in the Spring. In the Summer came Sadowa, and the Austrians gave up Venice."

"It is," as a veteran statesman once said, "the unexpected that happens." The anticipations of the most far-seeing, and the precautions of the wisest are mocked again and again by the bitter irony of events. We might as soon think to pluck the stars from heaven as to wrest its secrets from the future. The king, when he bade the advancing waves retire, was not more powerless than we, when we command the approaching days to appear and tell what things they bring. We cannot foresee even dimly the events of tomorrow, or of the next hour. We stand before a wall of impenetrable darkness. We have hopes and fears, but no certainties. Thoughts rise up within our bosom, but from the future there comes neither voice nor sign. If, then, this feat, which we rightly declare is impossible for man to perform, has been achieved — if the future has been read, and, not only years, but

* Rome and Venice, pp. 33-36.

14 CAN THE QUESTION BE ANSWERED?

centuries have yielded up their secrets — if we produce a book in which predictions, so numerous, and varied, and minute as to preclude all possibility of chance, were

RECORDED CENTURIES BEFORE

the events occurred in which they were startlingly fulfilled — will it be any longer possible to doubt that God is, and that this is His word to us ? If evidence of this kind can really be produced, doubt will be an impossibility. And whether our evidence be of this kind the reader will now be able to judge.

Chapter III. Predictions Regarding Tyre And Sidon

To show the nature of the evidence we have to offer we take the case of

TYRE.

Its doom is predicted in the twenty-sixth chapter of Ezekiel. A graphic picture is drawn of its siege and capture by Nebuchadnezzar (verses 7-11). The powerful fleet of Tyre swept the sea, and prevented the complete investment of the city; but, after a siege of thirteen years, it was at last taken by the Chaldean army. With this part of the prophecy, however, we do not concern ourselves. The genuineness of the book of Ezekiel will not be questioned, but still it would be difficult to prove that the prophecy was uttered before this event took place.

More, however, was predicted. After describing the vengeance which the king of Babylon will inflict, the prophecy proceeds : "And they shall lay thy stones, and thy timber, and thy dust in the midst of the waters" (verse 12). Let the change of person be noted. Having spoken of what Nebuchadnezzar will do, it is added, "And they shall," etc., as if others were to be joined with him in the work of destruction. Light is thrown upon this distinction in the third and fourth verses. God will cause many nations to come up against Tyre, "as the sea causes his waves to come