The prophetic symbols are sufficiently plain to be distinctly intelligible _after_ the fulfillment; but sufficiently obscure to baffle presumptuous curiosity before it. Had they been so written as to be fully intelligible beforehand, they must have interfered with man's free agency, by causing their own fulfillment. They hide the future sufficiently to make man feel his ignorance; they reveal enough to encourage faith in the God who rules it. God's prophecy is not merely His foretelling something which will certainly happen at some future time, but over which He has no control--as an astronomer foretells an eclipse of the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it--but it is the revealing of a part of His plan of this world's affairs, to show that God and not man is the sovereign of it. Infidels feel the power of this manifestation of God in His word; and are driven to every possible denial of the fact. They feel, instinctively, that the Bible prophecies are far more than mere predictions. They would rather endow every human being on earth with the power of predicting the future, than allow the God of heaven that power of ruling the present, which these prophecies assert. Hence we find them frequently patronizing "mediums" and fortune tellers of various kinds. [ILLUSTRATION: THE RUINS OF BABYLON] The prophecies of the scriptures are frequently predictions at once unexampled and unparalleled. Nations could not perish before they had grown, {136} nor empires be destroyed till they had accumulated. Babylon, Nineveh, Damascus and Tyre had been growing and flourishing for a thousand years, at the time that Jonah, Micah, Hosea and Isaiah pronounced their sentences against them. At that time, mankind had not yet seen a ruined empire. Judging from the past they had no reason to expect {137} anything else than prosperity concerning these cities; yet the prophets pronounced desolation and solitude against these cities which were then the capitals of nations more populous than this continent at the present time, and displayed buildings, a sight of whose crumbling ruins is deemed sufficient recompense for the perils of a journey of ten thousand miles. Every church, hall, school-house, theatre and hospital of Salt Lake City could have been conveniently arranged in the basement of the great temple of Belus. On the first floor there was room enough for the whole adult population of Utah to assemble, while the remaining seven stories would have still been open for the accomodation of the citizens of Babylon. When the prophets wrote their predictions, the walls of Babylon had been raised to the hight of three hundred and fifty feet, and made broad enough for six chariots to drive upon them abreast. From its hundred brazen gates issued the armies which trampled under foot the liberties of mankind, and presented their lives to the nod of a despot, who slew whom he would, and whom he would, allowed to live. Twenty years' provisions