We may gather much valuable information from symbolic language; but history written in advance would be more difficult to decipher than the inscriptions of Nineveh or Egypt, or the still more obscure hieroglyphics of Central America. Imagine Alexander reading Bancroft instead of Daniel. The Hebrew prophet he might understand, for he himself was the fulfillment of a part of Daniel's prophecy, but what could he learn from reading such a record as this? "In the year of Christ, 1847, the United States conquered Mexico and annexed California." He would say, "In the year of Christ--what does that mean? The United States may mean the states of Greece; but on what shore of the Mediterranean can Mexico and California be found?" What information could Aristotle gather from the fact that the electric telegraph was invented in 1844? Could all the wise men of Rome have explained to Julius Caesar the following dispatch, if given in prophetic vision? "Sebastopol was evacuated last night after enduring, for three days, an infernal fire of shot and shell." Should we diminish the vista to within two or three centuries, what could Oliver Cromwell, aided by the whole British parliament, have made {134} of a prophetic vision of a single newspaper paragraph, written in advance, to inform them that "Three companies of soldiers came down last night from Berwick to Southampton, by a special train, traveling fifty-four and a half miles an hour, including stoppages, and embarked immediately on arrival. The fleet put to sea at noon in the face of a full gale from the south-west?" Why, the intelligible part of this single paragraph would seem to them more impossible, and the unintelligible part more absurd than all the mysterious symbols of the Apocalypse. A complete prophetic history of the steam-engine, steam navigation and railways would have been necessary before they could have understood it. The world has accepted God's symbols thousands of years ago, and it is too late in the day for skeptics to deride the laws of thought and forms of speech. David's prophetic psalms, Isaiah's celestial anthems, Ezekiel's glorious symbols, Solomon's terse proverbs and the Savior's lovely parables will be recited and admired ages after the foggy abstractions of Parker and Newman, Carlyle and Emerson have vanished from the earth. The Biblical symbols of the Thirst of Passion, the Blood of Murder, the Rod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire of Wrath, the Balance of Righteousness, the Sword of Justice and the Wheels of Providence will photograph their lessons on Memory's tablet, while the mists of the "positive philosophy" float past unheeded to the land of forgetfulness. God's prophetic symbols are the {135} glorious embodiments of living truths, while skeptics' theories are the melancholy ghosts of expiring nonsense.