in the succession should ultimately break up into a number of separate nationalities-can it be conceived of any man that he should make this prophecy, the prophecy being at length fulfilled? The probabilities never existed, that could enable a man to forespeak a long and contingent future so positively, so circumstantially, so effectually. If the Hebrew prophets did speak before the events, and if the events were exact counterparts of their utterances, then were they supernaturally inspired of God.

It is commonly objected by disbelievers, since it is the fate of empires to rise and fall, and their mutability and decay is a matter of experience, that, to shrewd observers of affairs, it was but a natural suggestion to anticipate their downfall. But you will have noticed that the predictions of the Hebrew prophets, a mere specimen of which I have given you, were not of so vague and indefinite a kind. Rather, they foretold how the cities and kingdoms should fall. Their prevision was minutely circumstantial, rich in details. Their forespeech was discriminating, contradis tinctive, and even, as in Daniel's characterizations of the several empires, politically observant and profoundly analytical. If their predictions did indeed precede the events, and if the events were the realization of the predictions, only God's prescience could have availed to their utterance. No human genius, no happy conjectures, no sagacious anticipations, could possibly write out beforehand the most surprising details of history. Did they make their predictions, then, prior to the events? And have the events exactly answered to the predictions? The latter of these questions we attend to first. It is simply notorious that these statements of the prophets have their precise counterparts in actual occurrences. For Nineveh and Babylon, we have the attestations of profane history, even the reproduction in its narratives of the minute and distinctive circumstances declared by the proph

ets. As regards Egypt, we know it has been in a state of degradation for many centuries, and continues, to this day, to have no prince of its own. With respect to the Four Empires, all history assures us that the succession has been just as Daniel described it, that the salient features of each of the empires have corresponded to the letter of his description, that the fourth in the succession has been the last of the universal empires, and that it has been succeeded by a number of separate governments. I need not stop to quote from Diodorus Siculus and others, in attestation of what is so notorious, and is universally conceded. This brings us to the other question-Did the prophets make these predictions prior to the events? The disbeliever says, No. His only refuge is to try to make it appear that the predictions were published after the events. But what facts has he to found on? Not one. It is

purely a fabrication. He has done nothing to establish his position. He reasons in a circle. These are not real predictions, because they were written after the events; they were written after the events, because they speak of the events. Thus, the denial of the predictions is made to rest on their being posterior to the events; and their being posterior to the events is made to rest on the denial of the predictions. He further attempts to bolster his position by saying, that, admitting the prophets to have written at the dates claimed by them, yet these predictions were not in the original writings, but were interpolated by some forger or forgers after the events, as is indicated by the language and sentiments, associated with the predictions, not being in the characteristic style of the prophet to whom they are ascribed. But how unsatisfactory is this kind of a contention is shown in the fruitless discussion, as to whether Lord Bacon is not the real author of the tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare. The result is simply intangible. Besides, in the case of the Hebrew

prophets, this is the absurdest possible criticism. Whoever adopts this theory must believe, not only that the forgers were men of the loftiest genius, since some of the passages pronounced spurious-as for instance, certain chapters of the latter part of Isaiah-are the very masterpieces of Hebrew literature; but also that the Jews were phenomenally careless about their sacred books, even allowing them to be recklessly tampered with by literary adventurers. We know how jealously all nations that have sacred books watch over their integrity, and we specially know with what reverence the Jews regarded their Scriptures. The almost superstitious dread with which they viewed the omission or alteration of a single jot or tittle in the writings their actual counting up of the words and letters--the wearing of their phylacteries, slips of parchment on which were written words of their law-all this renders absolutely incredible the forgery theory. No such spurious additions could conceivably have been palmed off upon such a people.

On the other hand, positive testimony we have for the priority of the predictions to the events. The witness of Josephus, not only to the deep-felt sacredness of the Old Testament Scriptures and their unexceptionally recognized integrity in his day, but as well to the unbroken tradition on these points that had come down from the fathers; the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew books into Greek, which took place along the interval from 280 years B.C. to 150 years B.C., which translation is itself evidence of a prior ancientness; the reverential allusions of the apocry phal books to those of the sacred canon; the witness of successive books of the Bible to preceding ones from century to century; the centering of the national unity, as far back as authoritative notices will take us, in the people's peculiar estimate of the law of Moses, and in their attachment to the sublime Messianic hopes taught by the

prophets; and above all, the public judgment and decision of the Jewish Church and people, as declared in their earliest history;-all these facts, and others, unite to show that, for claimed antiquity of the Hebrew books, and for their unmarred original contents, we have the sanction of centuries of unquestioned authority. And recurring, in connection with these facts, to what we have already said of the reverence of the Jews for their Scriptures, we are obliged to feel that it is reasonably impossible to doubt either the dates severally claimed by the books, or their inviolate identity.

Moreover, let us take Daniel as a test case. Let us accept for a moment the latest date that disbelief has dared to assign to his prophecies. Say that he exercised his prophetic office as late as Antiochus Epiphanes-that is, in the period of the third of the Four Empires, namely, the Grecian. Now, at that time, the Roman power had not made itself known beyond the confines of Italy. What human sagacity could even then have conjectured the things that Daniel predicted concerning it? Who could have foreseen that the then comparatively insignificant community on the banks of the Tiber was to become that great world-power, strong as iron, which should break in pieces and tread down the nations? Who could have foreseen that, after attaining to the splendid summit of its greatness, it should be the last of the universal empires, and that in its decadence, it should branch out into a multitude of separate kingdoms? How was it that Daniel could so accurately fix the limit to that line of empires, and that he did not rather, in view of the already fourfold imperial succession, go on to anticipate further changes of the like kind? Was not all that supernatural? What, then, has disbelief gained by its violent endeavors to wrench the predictions out of their proper dates? It cannot put Daniel's writings posterior to the rise of Rome.

Contrive as it may, it cannot get rid of the priority of certain predictions to the event. Even granting to disbelief, for argument's sake, its whimsical demand as to the date of Daniel's prophecies, we are able to say to it, Thou hast slain thyself!

In these predictions of the prophets, then, concerning Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, and the Four Empires, we do find the supernatural inspiration of God. Their utterances were prior to the events. The events were remote from human view. Their utterances were not ambiguous. They did speak in the name of God. Their predictions were literally and minutely fulfilled. Therefore the subject-matter of their utterances was immediately from God, just as certainly as that Nineveh and Babylon have fallen, as that Egypt has been degraded, as that Rome became a universal conqueror.

But not only the fact of their inspiration, the fullness of it also is clearly set forth. Their very words were divinely controlled. Not that they were merely as a pen in a writer's hand, or as a machine under the control of a machinist, but rather as a child learning to walk; the child doing its own walking, meanwhile the mother's hand is upholding and guiding. The prophet's mind was actively at work, his own style of thinking and speaking was selfexpressive; but the hand of the Holy Ghost was guiding his mental individuality, and holding him up against stumbling. For, if Nahum had said of Nineveh, that it should be taken by means of a drying up of the Tigris; or Isaiah had said of Babylon, that it should be taken by means of an inundation of the Euphrates, thus reversing the revelations given-and certainly, if left to themselves in the work of expression, this might have been from what we know of infirmities of impression and lapses of memory; or if Ezekiel had said of Egypt, that it should be depopulated, and Isaiah had said of Babylon, that it should