om the negro servant of
servants, to the builders of the Coliseum, and the Pyramids. They
minutely describe, in their own expressive symbols, the nations yet
unfounded, and kings unborn, who should ignorantly execute the judgments
of the Lord. They predict the futures of over thirty States, _no two of
which are alike_; each prediction embracing a large number of minute
particulars, any one of which was utterly beyond the range of human
sagacity. To predict that a man will die may require no great sagacity;
but to tell the year of his death, that he will die as a criminal,
allege the crime for which he will be sentenced, the time, place, and
manner of his execution, and the name of the sheriff who will execute
the sentence, is plainly beyond the skill of man. Such is the character
of Bible predictions. Zedekiah's sentence was thus pronounced; and thus,
too, the sentences of nations doomed to ruin for their crimes are
recorded in the Bible, that men may know that the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken them. If, for instance, a prophet should declare that New York
should be overturned, and become a little fishing village, and that her
stones and timber, and her very dust, should be scraped off and thrown
into the East River; that Philadelphia should become a swamp, and never
be inhabited, from generation to generation; that Columbus should be
deserted, and become a hog-pen; that Louisville should become a dry,
barren desert; and New Orleans be utterly consumed with fire, and never
be built again; that learning should depart from Boston, and no
travelers ever pass through it any more; that New England should become
the basest of the nations, and no native American ever be President of
the Union, but that it should be a spoil and a prey to the most savage
tribes; and that the Russians should tread Washington under foot for a
thousand years; but that God would preserve Pittsburg in the midst of
destruction--and if all these things should come to pass, would any man
dare to deny that the prophet spake not the dictates of human sagacity,
or the calculations of genius, but the words of God?

To attempt to illustrate the divine wisdom displayed in a system of
connected predictions, covering the destiny of the nations of the world,
and extending from the dawn of history to the end of time, by presenting
two or three instances of the fulfillment of specific predictions, would
be something like exhibiting a fragment of a column as a monum