tap of the keys announced its presence. When Shakespeare wrote, "I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," it was nothing but the instinct of the poet, peering with a glimmer of inspiration into the darkened chamber towards which science was advancing. Bruno, Galileo, Newton, Columbus and Washington had glimmerings of this celestial light. The lines {132} written by Julia Ward Howe are as truthful as they are beautiful: "Lift up your eyes, desponding freemen, Fling to the winds your needless fears; He who unfurled your glorious banner, Said it shall wave a thousand years. A thousand years, my own Columbia, 'Tis the glad day so long foretold; 'Tis the glad morn whose early twilight Washington saw in days of old." But it is objected that the prophecies of scripture are obscure and wrapped up in symbolical language. This objection proceeds from a total misapprehension of the nature and design of prophecy, which is not to unveil the future for the gratification of our curiosity, but to give directions for our present duty and future welfare. The larger part of the prophecies of scripture is taken up with directions how men should regulate their conduct, rather than with information how God intends to regulate His. As to the objection against the symbolical language of prophecy, it may be asked, how can heavenly things be revealed to earth-born men, but by earthly figures? Who knows a single word, in our own or any other language, to express a spiritual state, or mental operation, that is not the name of some material state or physical operation used symbolically? Spirit, memory, imagination, etc., are each a symbol or figure of speech. In what way could God or man teach us to know anything except by either showing us a picture of it, or telling us what it is like, that is, simply by {133} type or symbol? These are the only possible means for conveying heavenly truth or future history to our minds. When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given literally in the style of history written in advance, he simply requires that God should make it utterly unintelligible.