For the very simple and satisfactory reason, that the great majority of the calculations of party politicians are failures, while the predictions of the Bible are verified by the event. Name a dozen leaders of American politics during the last half century, and you name half a score of disappointed presidential candidates, whose unfinished monuments prevent the kindly green sward of oblivion from vailing their disappointments, and check the prayer of the passing pilgrim that they may rest in peace; while of the last half dozen who have occupied the presidential chair, and guided the destinies of the most progressive half of the world, not a single man had been suggested by the political leaders even ten years before his election. No wonder politicians become shy of prediction.
But it is alleged, that while on a field so contracted as to become the arena of mere personal partialities it is confessedly difficult to predict the future, on the wider field of the world's great interests, the well-known uniformity of human passions and interests render their results calculable to the sagacious statesman.
Thus Draper argues, that nations, like the individuals composing them, have fixed periods of growth, manhood, decay, decrepitude, and death—more or less rapid, according to the stock and situation. Those who accept that dogma argue that all that is necessary in order to predict the fate of a nation is a correct calculation of its present age; whether of childhood, manhood, or senility.
It is wonderful how rashly men will risk their reputation for common sense on the sound of a plausible analogy, which, even were it valid, would not justify the inference drawn from it. For, suppose that there were as fixed laws of national as of individual life, can any man predict the period of the life of any individual, much less his destiny? May not the life of the nation be as liable to accidents and diseases as that of the individual?
But the claim has been actually made, that the skillful statesman, or philosophic observer, is able to foresee, and foretell, even such accidents. Dean Stanley quotes Mill as suggesting an ordinary sign of statesmanship in modern times: "To have made predictions often verified by the event, seldom or never falsified by it."
Others give a still wider range to prophetic inspiration. They tell us that all genius is prophetic, inasmuch as it grasps general laws, universal in their range, and unvariable in their operation, the application of which to particular events constitutes prediction. The Hebrew prophets were sagacious observers of human nature, and made very shrewd calculations of the future progress of events by a careful induction of the invariable laws of nature from the history of the past. But there was nothing supernatural in that. Every poet, philosopher, and statesman is more or less of a prophet. Indeed foresight, like insight, is common to all men: a superior degree of this common possession constitutes the prophet. Men of profound insight, or of extensive foresight, are equally rare in all departments of science. Ignorance ascribes to supernatural inspiration the sagacity derived from extensive observation of nature and history; while philosophy traces to the same source the inspiration of Moses and Mohammed, of Isaiah and Apollo, of the Principia, Paradise Lost, and the Apocalypse, of Rothschild, Napoleon, and Bismarck. Some geniuses expend themselves in poems, some in paintings, others in predictions. All are alike imperfect and fallible. Once in centuries, perhaps, we are astonished by the advent of a master, while occasional less perfect attempts and shrewd guesses keep the fires of ambition alive in the human breast.
But if this were a correct account of the case we should have our best prophets as the result of our widest observations of nature and history; the best should come last. The prophets of this nineteenth century should be far ahead of Moses in prophetic foresight, standing as they do on the summit of the observatory built by the experience of forty centuries. Whereas, as a matter of fact, the world knows nothing about these modern prophets, or their predictions. The instances alleged by Rationalists are contemptibly trivial when compared with the Bible predictions. Contrast, for instance, Cayotte's alleged prediction, that the fate of Charles would befall Louis XVI., and that the rabble would fill Paris with anarchy—with Daniel's grand historic outline of the four great empires; or with our Savior's detailed prediction of the siege of Jerusalem. Cayotte's guess commanded no respect, even while the coming event cast its shadow before it; nor did he profess to utter it in the name of the Great Disposer of all events as the seal and authentication of a revelation of moral duty to man; and so it was of no value to those threatened by the calamity. But our Lord's predictions were so authoritative in their tone, and so definite in their details, that they enabled his disciples to escape the impending destruction at that time; and their fulfillment has furnished a decisive proof of his divine foresight to all generations.
We are told by men who could not read one of Apollo's oracles to save their lives, nor recite one of Isaiah's prophecies to save their souls, that Apollo's oracles, no less than Isaiah's, were inspired. Could such persons be prevailed upon to read carefully any single prophetic book of Scripture, with the historic facts to which it refers, or even the briefest abridgment of these facts, such as that contained in The Comprehensive Commentary, they would not thus expose their ignorance alike of heathen and Christian oracles.
The differences between them are too numerous to be easily enumerated. The oracles of the heathen are always sources of gain to their prophets. The ancient Pythoness must have a hecatomb, the writing medium a dollar, and the modern Pythoness of the platform a dime. But under the inspiration of God even a Balaam becomes honest, and the leprosy of Naaman marks the sordid Gehazi and his seed forever.
The oracles of the heathen are always immoral in their tendency. From the first spiritual communication through the serpent medium in the tree of knowledge, down to the last spiritual marriage rapped out by the oracle, they are all in favor of pride, ambition, lying, lust, and murder. The oracles of God begin with a prohibition of curiosity, pride, covetousness, and theft: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And they are uniformly of the same tenor, forbidding, reproving, threatening vice, and encouraging virtue, down to the last: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; for without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."