Its solicitude. Who is so deplorably selfish and heartless as to feel no concern, and to take no interest, in the future happiness and misery of his fellow-creatures? By these various sources of influence and cords of attraction, therefore, prophecy excites our regard and commands our attention, seizes the current of our thoughts, and the bent of our minds; falls in with our wishes, engages our affections, and wins our hearts. Even our curiosity is subjected to its empire, and the imagination is enlisted in its service. figurative language and peculiar manner, its proverbial dress, and dexterous employment of the objects of time and sense, to designate what is future and spiritual, being aptly and admirably contrived to insinuate itself into our hearts, and to gain possession of our minds; to influence our opinions, and to persuade our judgments; to overcome our doubts and to remove our objections; to inform the ignorant and to persuade the incredulous; to strengthen conviction of what is unseen, and to confirm anticipation of what is to come. With the greatest reason, therefore, and the deepest wisdom, it has always been the advocate of truth and the handmaid of religion, to produce a strong assurance of the one, and to excite a deep and permanent respect and obedience to the other; to engage our hopes and fears on their side, and thereby to create vigilance in conduct, and diligence in duty, earnestness in devotion, and constancy in virtue: to afford consolation in sorrow, support in affliction, and help in trouble; "to make ready a people prepared for the Lord," whether it be at his first coming to redeem and to save, or at his second coming to judge and to destroy the world. It has indeed borne an important and essential part in the work of redemption, and powerfully aided and advanced the cause and the progress of truth and virtue; and by confirming the faith of the weak and the wavering, and by overcoming the difficulties and the objections of the unbelieving and the gainsaying, it is the Almighty's own ENGINE to pull down the strong holds of incredulity; and the artillery of heaven to batter and to destroy the munitions of error and of imposture. Miracles may be feigned, and in one most momentous and ever-memorable case they have been feigned with signal and with fatal success, and have served to blind the eyes and to rivet the chains, and in a great degree to accomplish the delusion and thraldom of the Mahometan world. Wonders may be sometimes equivocal, or fortuitous; signs may be trifling or uncertain; but prophecy cannot be aped nor pretended to any considerable extent, nor be accidental in any great degree. By prophecy, therefore, the true and all-foreseeing God has always a decisive advantage over all the gods of the heathen, and an easy and complete victory over all the stratagems of imposture, and all the refuges of lies. The oracles of the heathen but poorly aped the Divine foreknowledge, and evinced rather the art and cunning of an interested and crafty priesthood, than the fair and incontrovertible evidences of foresight the answers being in general so unintelligible, or so uncertain and unmeaning, as to perplex and confound, or to mislead and deceive, those who consulted them; and were mere expedients of craft, and inventions of fraud, to save the credit of the oracle, and to maintain the influence of error, and the empire of idolatry, whatever might be the event: and it may be safely asserted, without fear or possibility of contradiction, that no regular chain of real and authentic predictions, no genuine and undoubted continuation and completion of prophecies, can be produced by all the forgeries of idolatry, and all the devices and impositions of Islamism. celebrated answer given to CROSUS Sufficiently exemplifies and betrays the profound artifices and amazing dexterity of oracles in general, "Croesus, by crossing the Halys, will destroy a great empire" Unfortunately however for the deluded and wretched monarch, it was his own empire which he destroyed! The veracity notwithstanding and the reputation of the oracle remained undisputed and unimpeached, and the event in the minds of the deluded and miserable * Αλυν διαβας μεγαλην αρχην καταλύσει. The slaves of error and of superstition was believed neither to have disproved nor to have disgraced the prediction. Mahomet, by far the most cunning, the most dexterous, and the most successful of all impostors, though perfectly aware of the important use and unbounded influence of prophecy, and though ardently desiring to obtain its decisive aid, and to employ its effectual services in his cause, yet cannot be said with propriety to have ventured on more than one brief, obscure, and indeterminate prediction, "The Greeks have been overcome in the nearest part of the earth, yet after their defeat they will certainly overcome within the space of a few, that is, eight or ten years*." How vapid, and trifling! It might easily have been guessed, without any portion of second sight, or any pretensions to inspiration, that the whole Roman empire would be more than a match for the feeble force which the Persians, in the then weak and distracted state of their affairs, were able to bring against them. It is indeed scarcely fit to be named, or compared, with the early, precise, and circumstantially detailed prophecies concerning the Messiah, in the fifty-third of Isaiah or the twenty-second Psalm, or with those of the fall of Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, Egypt, Jerusalem, or with the still more ancient prophecy of Noah," God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall * SALE'S Koran, vol. II. be his servant:" a prediction of the most remote and venerable antiquity, and of singularly exact detail, and yet so punctually realized and confirmed in all its bearings, and in all its particulars, viz. in the conversion and consequent civilization of the barbarous nations of Europe, which are the acknowledged descendants of Japheth, and their vast superiority at home and abroad, in peace and in war, in arts and in arms, in religion and politics, over the effeminate natives of Asia, who are the offspring of Shem, and the extreme degradation and miserable servitude of the Canaanites and Egyptians, and indeed of most of the Africans, who are the posterity of Ham *. The parables and visions of Balaam also furnish another early, ample, precise, and carefully detailed prophecy, and present us with a most extraordinary and particularized anticipation of many distant events, and future histories, since realized and completed in their utmost extent, and with the greatest truth and exactness. The design, therefore, of the Head of the church, in conferring upon her the inestimable treasure and PALLADIUM of the prophecies, seems to have been to bear from age to age an unsuspicious and irresistible testimony to the truth and honour of his own religion; to be the constant * See Horsley's Sermons for an able and diffuse exposition of this prophecy. + Numbers xxiv. |