For I have as little
sympathy with those who prate so loudly of the progress of the species,
and the advent of I know-not-what Cockaigne of universal peace and
plenty, as I have with those who believe on the strength of "unfulfilled
prophecy," the downfall of Christianity, and the end of the human race
to be at hand. Nevertheless, one may well believe that prophecy will be
fulfilled in this great crisis, as it is in every great crisis, although
one be unable to conceive by what method of symbolism the drying up of
the Euphrates can be twisted to signify the fall of Constantinople: and
one can well believe that a day of judgment is at hand, in which for
every nation and institution, the wheat will be sifted out and gathered
into God's garner, for the use of future generations, and the chaff
burnt up with that fire unquenchable which will try every man's work,
without being of opinion that after a few more years are over, the great
majority of the human race will be consigned hopelessly to never-ending
torments.
If prophecy be indeed a divine message to man; if it be anything but a
cabbala, useless either to the simple-minded or to the logical, intended
only for the plaything of a few devout fancies, it must declare the
unchangeable laws by which the unchangeable God is governing, and has
always governed, the human race; and therefore only by understanding
what has happened, can we understand what will happen; only by
understanding history, can we understand prophecy; and that not merely
by picking out--too often arbitrarily and unfairly--a few names and
dates from the records of all the ages, but by trying to discover its
organic laws, and the causes which produce in nations, creeds, and
systems, health and disease, growth, change, decay and death.
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