We can imagine no graver position than that of the man who takes his, seat in the Jury-box at a criminal trial. He is bound by his oath and by his duty to his country, not only “to well and truly try,” but also to declare his judgment. It is his to decide whether he shall brand a man with lasting infamy and crush the hearts of parents, wife, children, friends, beneath a load which nothing can remove. He is asked to say whether a man, whose good name, liberty, and life, are as sacred as his own, shall be consigned to years of a stern and terrible prison discipline, or, it may be, to death at the hands of the executioner.
And yet it sometimes happens that one piece of evidence impresses the mind of the Jury with such overwhelming conviction that they cannot hesitate, though the gravest of all issues depends upon their decision. A large employer of labor, for example, has been found dead on the way to his own home. The cause of death was a gunshot wound, and it was evident that he had been murdered. One of his workmen, whom he had discharged after a personal altercation, is suspected, and placed upon his trial. The quarrel, and the consequent discharge are proved. Witnesses also testify that the prisoner threatened to be revenged; that he was seen in the neighborhood at the time of the murder; and that a gun, which had been recently fired, was found in his house. So far there is ground for strong suspicion. But, when it is proved that the wadding used in loading the gun was found in an adjacent hedge, was unrolled, and discovered to be part of a letter addressed to the prisoner, and that the letter itself, from which the piece had been torn, was found in his possession, suspicion becomes certainty. Both parts are laid before the Jury, and in that moment every hope of the murderer’s escape vanishes. Have we anything in the whole range of the Christian evidences which will prove the claims of Scripture as convincingly as the fragments of the letter prove the man’s guilt? I believe we have. I believe the evidence placed in our hands by the fulfilled predictions of Scripture does more.
In the dedication to his book on the, Prophecies, Bishop Newton refers to some conversations he had with Marshal Wade. The latter laughed at the alleged proof of Christianity from the fulfillment of prophecy, and all argument was set aside with the observation that the predictions were written after the events. The Bishop urged in reply that there were several prophecies which were not fulfilled till recent times, and several more which were beyond doubt written centuries before the events happened. The Marshal was startled, “and said he must acknowledge that, if this point could be proved to satisfaction, there would be no argument against such plain matter of fact; it would certainly convince him, and, he believed, would be the readiest way to convince every reasonable man of the truth of revelation.”
That judgment is one which all must endorse. If it is possible to produce evidence of the kind referred to by Bishop Newton, then the inspiration of the Scriptures is no longer open to doubt, nor is the existence of Him from whom they are said to have come. As this is a point of such vast importance let us
WEIGH THE ARGUMENT
for a moment. None have better information in regard to our own families than we ourselves possess. We know the present condition and the past history of each member of them. We are aware of the circumstances which will largely influence their future, and we see even now how these circumstances are likely to affect them. Say, then, that we are asked to go forward in thought only ten years, and to state distinctly what the condition of each member of the family will be at the end of that time; to say who will be alive, if any; who, if any, dead; in what place each will then be residing; who will be in prosperous circumstances, who in circumstances the reverse. How should we meet the demand? Should we entertain the questions seriously even for a moment? Much as we do know, none but a madman or a fool could suppose us capable of resolving such points as these.
Again: we all have some acquaintance with the city, town, or place, in which we dwell. We can say whether there is promise of increased population and prosperity, or whether a decrease of both is threatened. But, thoroughly as we know the place and its prospects, will any one of us venture to leave the region of opinion and surmise, and speak minutely and positively of what its condition will be a hundred years hence? Or, to take another illustration: there are men now guiding the destinies of Europe who have studied politics for half a century. Many of them have had long and accurate knowledge of the tendencies and resources of the various countries, and of the dangers which threaten them from without and from within.
Ask the man who has the keenest vision of them all, what will be the condition at the close of the next half century of India, or Germany, or France, or Great Britain. Ask whether Switzerland, for example, will then retain her independence, or have been seized by one of her bigger neighbors, and in the latter event, by which. Suppose these questions gravely put, and gravely entertained, will not the answer be, that the things which we wish to know lie far beyond the range of the keenest sight possessed by man— that the wisest, though he may shrewdly conjecture, cannot write a single page, nor pen a single line, of the story of the future?
It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to emphasize this by further illustrations. But literature abounds with proofs of how completely, notwithstanding all we say about insight and foresight, the future is hid from us. Malte Brun in his description of Prussia, says that “from its proximity to Russia it must be in many respects a secondary power,” little anticipating the political developments of present times. “It is curious,” Henry Greville writes under date March 20, 1848, “that Lord Hardinge, who arrived here on Thursday, passed two hours at Vienna, and saw Metternich, who spoke of passing events without the slightest apprehension, and said that it was possible there might be some disturbances in different parts of the Empire, but that they would be put down without any difficulty, and that he had no intention of making any concessions at this time. Four days afterward he was obliged to fly from Vienna, and his house was sacked and burnt.”
Instances of similar blindness might easily be multiplied, but I mention three only which have a common bearing on one of the greatest events of modern times—the regeneration of Italy. Macaulay concludes his essay on Machiavelli with the words: “In the church of Santa Croce a monument was erected to his memory.... which will be approached with still deeper homage when the object to which his public life was devoted shall be attained, when the foreign yoke shall be broken, when a second Procida shall avenge the wrongs of Naples, when a happier Rienzi shall restore the good estate of Rome, when the streets of Florence and Bologna shall again resound with their ancient war-cry, ‘Popolo; popolo; muoiano i tiranni.’” This was written in 1827. Who knew that in the days of men then living all these aspirations would be fulfilled—that every tyrant should have fled, and that the land be no more darkened with the shadow of an oppressor?
In 1851, Mr. Gladstone published his letter regarding the condition of Naples. Between twenty and thirty thousand political prisoners lay crowded together in the fortresses and jails. No man raised his voice on behalf of liberty, or even fell under suspicion of holding liberal opinions, but was sent into exile or cast into a dungeon. Mr. Gladstone published his indignant appeal to the public opinion of Europe, thinking, perhaps, that the Neapolitan Government might be shamed into humanity, but seeing no other hope for a cruelly oppressed people. Who could have foreseen that before another ten years had passed that land should be free—free as it had not been for ages; and that a fugitive from his beloved Italy, then wandering on the far-distant shores of America, was the man through whom the deliverance should come? Who was then able, with his hand upon these facts, to warn the tyrant, or to console the downtrodden?
The last and not least startling instance, which I cite, of man’s ignorance of the future, is found in a letter written on the eve of Italy’s complete deliverance. As late as the Spring of 1866 George A. Sala wrote as follows regarding Venice: “When is the day of her deliverance to come, and when are the tears which, with but twelve months’ intermission, have flowed for half a century, to be dried? She waits and waits, and the Italians wait too, clenching their hands, and grinding their teeth.... It is impossible to cross the frontier, or to be half-an-hour in the Austro-Venetian territory, without becoming aware that the Austrian ‘Autograph’—as Mr. Thackeray called the double-headed eagle—has got a very tight grip of the country... As he is a very powerful eagle, strong on the wing and adamantine in the talons, the contingency of his giving up his Venetian quarry is, to say the least, remote. It is not impossible.” To these words he has appended the following note: “This was written in the spring. In the summer came Sadowa, and the Austrians gave up Venice.”
“It is,” as a veteran statesman once said, “the unexpected that happens.” The anticipations of the most far-seeing, and the precautions of the wisest are mocked again and again by the bitter irony of events. We might as soon think to pluck the stars from heaven as to wrest its secrets from the future. The king, when he bade the advancing waves retire, was not more powerless than we, when we command the approaching days to appear and tell what things they bring. We cannot foresee even dimly the events of tomorrow, or of the next hour. We stand before a wall of impenetrable darkness. We have hopes and fears, but no certainties. Thoughts rise up within our bosom, but from the future there comes neither voice nor sign. If, then, this feat, which we rightly declare is impossible for man to perform, has been achieved—if the future has been read, and, not only years, but centuries have yielded up their secrets—if we produce a book in which predictions, so numerous, and varied, and minute as to preclude all possibility of chance, were
RECORDED CENTURIES BEFORE
the events occurred in which they were startlingly fulfilled—will it be any longer possible to doubt that God is, and that this is His word to us? If evidence of this kind can really be produced, doubt will be an impossibility. And whether our evidence be of this kind the reader will now be able to judge.