But it is objected that the prophecies of scripture are obscure and wrapped up in symbolical language. This objection proceeds from a total misapprehension of the nature and design of prophecy, which is not to unveil the future for the gratification of our curiosity, but to give directions for our present duty and future welfare. The larger part of the prophecies of scripture is taken up with directions how men should regulate their conduct, rather than with information how God intends to regulate His.
As to the objection against the symbolical language of prophecy, it may be asked, how can heavenly things be revealed to earth-born men, but by earthly figures? Who knows a single word, in our own or any other language, to express a spiritual state, or mental operation, that is not the name of some material state or physical operation used symbolically? Spirit, memory, imagination, etc., are each a symbol or figure of speech. In what way could God or man teach us to know anything except by either showing us a picture of it, or telling us what it is like, that is, simply by type or symbol? These are the only possible means for conveying heavenly truth or future history to our minds.
When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given literally in the style of history written in advance, he simply requires that God should make it utterly unintelligible.
We may gather much valuable information from symbolic language; but history written in advance would be more difficult to decipher than the inscriptions of Nineveh or Egypt, or the still more obscure hieroglyphics of Central America. Imagine Alexander reading Bancroft instead of Daniel. The Hebrew prophet he might understand, for he himself was the fulfillment of a part of Daniel's prophecy, but what could he learn from reading such a record as this? "In the year of Christ, 1847, the United States conquered Mexico and annexed California." He would say, "In the year of Christ—what does that mean? The United States may mean the states of Greece; but on what shore of the Mediterranean can Mexico and California be found?" What information could Aristotle gather from the fact that the electric telegraph was invented in 1844? Could all the wise men of Rome have explained to Julius Caesar the following dispatch, if given in prophetic vision? "Sebastopol was evacuated last night after enduring, for three days, an infernal fire of shot and shell."
Should we diminish the vista to within two or three centuries, what could Oliver Cromwell, aided by the whole British parliament, have made of a prophetic vision of a single newspaper paragraph, written in advance, to inform them that "Three companies of soldiers came down last night from Berwick to Southampton, by a special train, traveling fifty-four and a half miles an hour, including stoppages, and embarked immediately on arrival. The fleet put to sea at noon in the face of a full gale from the south-west?" Why, the intelligible part of this single paragraph would seem to them more impossible, and the unintelligible part more absurd than all the mysterious symbols of the Apocalypse.
A complete prophetic history of the steam-engine, steam navigation and railways would have been necessary before they could have understood it.
The world has accepted God's symbols thousands of years ago, and it is too late in the day for skeptics to deride the laws of thought and forms of speech. David's prophetic psalms, Isaiah's celestial anthems, Ezekiel's glorious symbols, Solomon's terse proverbs and the Savior's lovely parables will be recited and admired ages after the foggy abstractions of Parker and Newman, Carlyle and Emerson have vanished from the earth. The Biblical symbols of the Thirst of Passion, the Blood of Murder, the Rod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire of Wrath, the Balance of Righteousness, the Sword of Justice and the Wheels of Providence will photograph their lessons on Memory's tablet, while the mists of the "positive philosophy" float past unheeded to the land of forgetfulness. God's prophetic symbols are the glorious embodiments of living truths, while skeptics' theories are the melancholy ghosts of expiring nonsense.
The prophetic symbols are sufficiently plain to be distinctly intelligible after the fulfillment; but sufficiently obscure to baffle presumptuous curiosity before it. Had they been so written as to be fully intelligible beforehand, they must have interfered with man's free agency, by causing their own fulfillment. They hide the future sufficiently to make man feel his ignorance; they reveal enough to encourage faith in the God who rules it. God's prophecy is not merely His foretelling something which will certainly happen at some future time, but over which He has no control—as an astronomer foretells an eclipse of the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it—but it is the revealing of a part of His plan of this world's affairs, to show that God and not man is the sovereign of it. Infidels feel the power of this manifestation of God in His word; and are driven to every possible denial of the fact. They feel, instinctively, that the Bible prophecies are far more than mere predictions. They would rather endow every human being on earth with the power of predicting the future, than allow the God of heaven that power of ruling the present, which these prophecies assert. Hence we find them frequently patronizing "mediums" and fortune tellers of various kinds.
[THE RUINS OF BABYLON]