with a boldness no less arresting and impressive, proclaimed Nineveh's destruction and ruin. The Lord "will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work." "How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in !" 1 " Fearfully and most convincingly have all these predictions been fulfilled. Nineveh has gone down in utter ruin." "Affliction has not risen up a second time." The very ruins were lost. Mounds of "abominable filth were cast on the place where her palaces stood, making her "vile"; and all that Layard, Botta, and others have done in opening her ruins and exposing her long-buried treasures, have given a new fulfilment to the prophecy by making her "a GAZINGstock" to the whole civilised world. 3. No less distinct were the prophecies regarding the destruction of BABYLON, but the means of the overthrow were so different from those by which Nineveh was overwhelmed, that the prediction carries within itself indirect evidence of its truth. One hundred and sixty years before an enemy approached the city, its doom was foretold. Isaiah and Jeremiah, with startling vividness, and yet in tones of deepest sadness, delineate the future of Babylon at the time when its glory and strength bade defiance to every prediction. Most mysteriously have the springs of history been touched, and most distinctly have prophetic results been brought out. Long descriptive passages in the Bible might be quoted, but two or three will be sufficient for our argument. "Be 1 Zephaniah ii., 13, 14, 15. hold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall NEVER be INHABITED, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there but the wild BEASTS of THE DESERT SHALL LIE THERE; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces."1 Again, "And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment, and a hissing, without an inhabitant." These and similar predictions of overthrow and utter ruin have been literally fulfilled, as every one knows who has even very cursorily read the history of the ancient eastern monarchies. No less strangely were the means announced by which this powerful city was to be overwhelmed, and no less exactly have the results come forth as predicted. 2 "3 For the taking of Nineveh, a river was to rise and make a breach; but for the taking of Babylon a river was to be withdrawn, and its deserted bed was to be a highway for the approach of Cyrus' soldiers. Thus saith the Lord "that saith unto the deep, Be dry; and I will DRY UP THY RIVERS.' "A drought is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up." 4 "And I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry." 5 The secrecy of the approach and the helplessness of the ensnared Babylonians were no less clearly taught in such predictions as these: "I have laid a snare for thee, 1 Isaiah xiii. 17, 19-22. 2 Jeremiah li. 37. 8 Isaiah xliv. 27. 4 and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and THOU WAST NOT AWARE: thou art FOUND, and ALSO CAUGHT, because thou hast striven against the Lord." 1 It is unnecessary to repeat the well-known facts of Cyrus having turned the river Euphrates from its course, and of his troops passing secretly into the city when Belshazzar was madly quaffing wine from the vessels of the Sanctuary, until the mysterious handwriting on the wall paralysed him with terror. Babylon was “snared and caught." The soldiers having been taught by Cyrus that the doors of the houses were of palm-wood and covered with bitumen, secretly carried torches with them and suddenly set fire to the city, fulfilling the prediction 2— "And her high GATES shall be BURNED WITH FIRE; and the people shall labour in vain, and the folk IN THE FIRE, and they shall be weary.” "3 So complete was the stratagem of Cyrus, so sudden the seizure of the place, and so silent and sure its overthrow, that those in the one part of the city did not know for some time what disasters had overtaken another portion of the inhabitants. In every particular have the prophecies been fulfilled, and they differ so completely in arrangement from those relating to Tyre and Nineveh as to remove them from any of the common efforts of that sagacity or foresight of which rationalism has recently attempted to make so much. In short, the details are so varied, and yet so accurately stated regarding both the means by which these great cities were to be destroyed, and the permanence of their ruin, that it is difficult to conceive how any unprejudiced student can escape the impression that the prophets were supernaturally guided. 1 Jeremiah 1. 24. 3 2 Xenophon, Book i. chap. cxci. 3 Jeremiah li. 58. CHAPTER XV. Recent Theories regarding the Supernatural and the Reign of Law-Evidence in Nature of the Supernatural. "The battle against the supernatural has been going on long, and strong men have conducted and are conducting it; but what they want is a weapon. The logic of unbelief wants a universal. But no real universal is forthcoming, and it only wastes its strength in wielding a fictitious one."-The Rev. J. B. Mosley, B.D. HE careful study of the Bible constrains those who Tare not wedded to some foregone conclusion, to THE acknowledge impressions or ideas of a supernatural influence such as are created by the perusal of no other book. The brief review which we have taken of History in its relation to Prophecy, has shown an enlightening and a controlling power which is not recognisable within the sphere of ordinary records. But in accepting and advocating the existence of supernatural influences, we have to confront relentless opposition. Animated by an intense love of nature, and sensitively jealous of even the slightest reference to the supernatural, some of our most influential writers are not only repudiating every agency which is independent of physical tests, but assigning to the laws of nature an executive or administrative function. They are investing them with powers which can only be legitimately connected with intelligence and purpose; and the scorn with which they repel every allusion to direct control by a personal Deity, is less perplexing than it is saddening. The repudiation of the supernatural is, with X them, axiomatic; they put the cause out of court; they can see in nature nothing more than a rigidly regulated system, and they limit the basis of their philosophy to those forces and phenomena with which alone physical science is conversant. They do not hesitate to assert that the Creator cannot be "imagined" as acting on the line of cause and effect, and that even by His own hand no law can be deflected or reversed. He has not the liberty of acting, except within the lines of a fixed routine; and in the moral government of the human race He is without freedom of volition apart from those laws which keep in harmonious movement the everlasting machinery of the universe. The enthusiasm with which researches have been prosecuted in physical science, has predisposed some to originate, and many to accept theories, of which nothing would have been ever heard if there had been similar earnestness in the counterpoise study of metaphysics. Opposite tendencies would have been balanced, and in the peaceful walks of science and philosophy we should not have been meeting bigotry and intolerance as narrow, sharp, and unrelenting, as have ever confronted the student of purely theological controversies. The conclusions which have found in Britain a large measure of sympathy, if not avowed acceptance, may be best estimated through the language of their advocates. A few statements may be sufficiently historical and expository not only to induce a careful examination of the tendency of British scepticism, but to show the probable effect of those concessions which some of our ablest Christian apologists are making in the struggle to counteract its progress. As the late Rev. Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford, was among the first to utter, with fearless emphasis, what others were holding |