A course somewhat less gratifying to the eagerness of enthusiastic spirits must be pursued, if the subject of the sacred enigma does not actually stand within our view; if it rest in a foreign region, as, for example, in the region of futurity. It will by no means follow that a symbolic prediction, which remains unfulfilled, ought not to be made the subject of investigation; for as the description doubtless contains, by condensation, the substance of the unknown reality, and perhaps also much of its character, it may, even when mingled with erroneous interpretations, serve important purposes in the excitement of pious hope. The delivery of these enigmas into the hands of the Church, and their intricate intermixture with fulfilled prophecies, and their being everywhere embossed with attractive lessons of piety and virtue, not to mention the explicit invitation to read and study them, may confidently be deemed to convey a full license of examination. Yet in these instances the well-known laws of the peculiar style in which the predictions are enveloped, suggest restrictions and cautions which no humble and pious expositor can overlook. The fault of the dogmatist in prophecy is then manifest. Is a mystic prediction averred to be unfulfilled? then we know, that, by the essential law of its composition, it is designedly, we might say artfully constructed, so as to admit of several, and perhaps of many, plausible interpretations, having nearly equal claims of probability; and we know, moreover, that the special mark couched amid the symbols, and which in the issue is to arbitrate among the various solutions, is drawn from some minute peculiarity in the surface and complexion of the future substance, and therefore cannot be available for the purpose of discrimination, until that substance, in the shape and color of reality, starts forth into day.