as for
example the intimation of the discovery of America by Seneca; or of
Shakespeare by Plato; or the Reformation by Dante. Sometimes the result
has been produced by the power of divination, granted in some
inexplicable manner to ordinary men. Of such a kind were many of the
ancient oracles, the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could
not be denied without a perversion of history. Such was the
foreshadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the legend of
the apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so
understood 400 years before its actual accomplishment. Such, but with
less certainty, was the traditional prediction of the conquest of
Constantinople by the Mussulmans; the alleged predictions by Archbishop
Malachi, whether composed in the eleventh or sixteenth centuries, of the
series of popes down to the present time; not to speak of the well-known
instances which are recorded both in French and English history. But
there are several points which at once place the prophetic predictions
on a different level from any of these. _It is not that they are more
exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that
of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire; and our Lord himself has
excluded the precise knowledge of times and seasons from the widest and
highest range of prophetic vision." (Jewish Church, 463. The Bible: its
Form and Substance, pages 80, 82.)

"It might safely be admitted," says Dr. Pusey, "that the outward
predictions of time and place are of the body, rather than of the soul
of prophecy, yet as indications that he revealed himself, who alone
could know long before what he willed to bring to pass by his
Providence, the predictions of the Hebrew prophets are not to be
paralleled by any human history.

"Definite predictions of the Hebrew prophets have been instanced above.
Dr. Stanley's instances of secular fulfillment are unhappy." He then
proceeds to examine in their turn the political, poetic, Popish,
Mohammedan, and heathen oracles quoted by Dean Stanley.

_I. The Political Predictions._

Sterling, as quoted by Mr. Spence, so far from predicting the great
catastrophe of the disruption of the United States _at the end_ of the
four years, says that no wise man would predict anything even within
those four years. "It appears to me that amid so many elements of
uncertainty as to the future, both from the excited state of men's minds
in the States them