ming.
Searching into prophecy enables us to forecast the future with tolerable
certainty, just as the scientists can tolerably forecast the weather by
studying the laws, forces, and inclinations of nature. So the Christian
student, by studying prophecy, Providence, and history, and comparing
them, can know much of what is coining. On the Divine side all prophecy
is certain, but on the human it can only be approximated. Prophecy
furnishes the strongest kind of evidence in favour of the existence of
God--inspiration of the Scriptures and Providence. The Lord Himself
calls our attention to this kind of evidence frequently in the Bible.
"Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons,
said the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and show us what shall
happen; let them show the former things what they be, that we may
consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for
to come" (Isa. xli. 21, 22).

Prophecy does not interfere with the coming to pass of an event, or
suppress man's freedom no more than the man at Washington, who gives us
the weather probabilities, makes the weather or regulates nature. Even
when men know the sequence of a thing they oftentimes persist in doing
it. The soldiers who wrangled at the cross about the dividing of the
garments of the crucified One, thought little and cared less for
prophecy; but when they came to the Saviour's vest, they fell into the
line of prophecy, for at once they cast lots for that, all of which had
been fore-written for hundreds of years. Run and tell that young man
that the place he is entering is the way of death. Tell him that the air
is foul, that the furniture and painted humanity are all gotten up to
deceive. Tell him that in a few years he will repent ever having seen
such a place. And what is your reward? It is that you are laughed at
and esteemed as one that interferes, and told to mind your own business.
The young man is free and self-confident. Look in a few years for that
same young man and you shall find him a terrible example of fulfilled
prophecy. Diseased, worn, weak, and weary, he cries in the anguish of
soul for his folly. "And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy
body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart
despised reproof?" (Prov. v. 11, 12).

The famous European Congress which met in Berlin, we foresaw would meet,
near three years ago, and told you the condit