"Alexander is not dead, but lives beyond the stars, and his body rests in this tomb. He lived under the Emperor Antoninus, who, foreseeing that great benefit would result from his services, returned evil for good. For, while on his knees and about to sacrifice to the true God, he was led away to execution. O, sad times! in which sacred rites and prayers, even in caverns, afford no protection to us. What can be more wretched than such a life, and what than such a death, when they could not be buried by their friends and relatives? At length they are resplendent in heaven. He has scarcely lived who has lived in Christian times." Sometimes a victor's crown--one of laurel--is intended to mark that the interred one has passed {130} through the agony and strife of his Christian conflict, and was triumphant. At other times the simplest words indicated a saint's last resting place. In some cases these epitaphs are imperfectly spelled, indicating the humble class to which the survivors belonged. * * * * * CHAPTER IX. FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY. PROPHECY DEFINED--OBJECTIONS TO SYMBOLICAL LANGUAGE ANSWERED--HISTORY REVERSED, UNINTELLIGIBLE--NECESSITY OF PROPHETIC OBSCURITY--INFIDEL DREAD OF PROPHECY--PROPHECIES CONCERNING BABYLON--THEIR FULFILLMENT--PROPHECIES CONCERNING EGYPT--PROPHECIES CONCERNING JUDEA AND THE JEWS--CONCERNING THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA--TESTIMONIES OF INFIDELS--MODERN PROPHECY--ITS FULFILLMENT. An astronomer is able to predict the eclipses of the sun and moon, because he knows the laws that govern the heavenly bodies. So also a countrywoman can predict the time of hatching, and the kind of birds that will come forth from a certain class of eggs placed under a fowl in the act of incubation, because she has many times observed {131} phenomena of this kind. Prophecy is only prediction in the highest sense of the term. Our Heavenly Father, who knows, not merely the laws that govern the material world, but also the mental, moral and physical laws that govern humanity, can foretell the phenomena incident to man's social and religious development. He who knows the origin of man--both his strength and his weakness--and the extent and influence of the powers of darkness, can foretell the result of that awful conflict that has been in progress since before the foundation of the world. When man, in obedience to law, shall have gained his higher development and become as one of the Gods, he will, no doubt, obtain the power of prophecy. Even in his present state, every true poet, philosopher and scientist may be said to possess, in a certain degree, this gift; in fact, so far as they can penetrate into the laws and mysteries of the universe beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. Thus the steam-engine was predicted eighteen hundred years before Watt heard the first deep, regular respiration of this modern evangel. Thus, the magnetic telegraph was expected for quite three hundred years before its first