another quality which is even more valuable. It has a certainty of sense superior to that which the other possesses. The certainty of a symbolic prophecy is the result not alone of precedent and established custom, which are good guarantees in all cases of the meaning, and on which the intimations of literal language rest with perfect security: it has this guarantee, also, but it is not its chief one. The basis of its certainty is, that sure rock of demonstrative reasoning which mathematical truth selects as the foundation on which she builds those impregnable problems of hers that can afford equally to laugh at scepticism and to contemn sophistry. It is on this rock, too, that symbolic prophecy builds her revelations which, although problematic, are true.

The fact that a mathematical problem is dark and incomprehensible, throws not the slightest imputation on its truth and certainty. The Principia of Newton are dark in the estimation of most minds, because they are not understood; yet they contain truths that are certain. The Revelation then may be dark and yet its meaning may be certain; and it must be this, else it contained not a Divine revelation. Does it, then, like the Principia of the philosopher, take a master mind to fathom it, and is it to such alone clear, and its sense to such alone certain? By no means; it has doubtless been designed by its Divine and beneficent author for the poor as well as the rich in mental wealth, for the child as well as the man in wisdom. Nay, its essentially pictorial character shows its final destiny to be that of extreme simplicity

and perspicuousness. Its darkness hitherto, arises not at all from any inherent incapacity of the human mind to understand it, but simply from the fact that the certainty and clearness of its sense have been dependent on causes not in operation; its certainty and clearness, arise from causes which it has taken centuries to evolve and bring into action. Such are the principles of its interpretation, which for centuries have not been discovered, the plan of its structure, which has not been known, and above all, the fulfilment of its predictions; the fact that its realities were unknown, has above all invested it with obscurity. The causes, then, which ultimately yield to it certainty of sense and perspicuousness of expression subserve, by their hitherto non-action, the design of God who evidently framed it by his Spirit, to be first a dark, and afterwards a clear revelation. Herein is the Divine wisdom magnified, who has constructed a revelation designed to proclaim to all time the agency, but not to obstruct the course of his providence.

This power of demonstrating its own meaning, which an allegoric prophecy contains within itself, arises from the combination of the three following elements in it:

1st. The known general senses of its hieroglyphic signs, as ascertained by interpretations rendered in Scripture.

2d. The known particular senses of these, as fixed by the unity of design which pervades and the duplication which is made of the allegory.

3d. The correspondence between the significations of the signs thus absolutely fixed and the known realities which the allegory foreshadows, that is, the events which it predicts.

When the conditions represented by these three elements are fulfilled, the result is a demonstration of the highest order, and evidently such as inspiration alone can afford, for it is a prophecy with sense demonstrated.

It is to be observed that in the fulfilment of the above conditions there are two separate and distinct demonstrations of the sense. The sense is demon

strated first of all by the correspondence which is proved to subsist between the significations of the signs, determined by interpretations rendered in Scripture, and the significations of these fixed by the allegory's unity of conception and design, the sense being farther checked by the reduplication of the allegory, as also, it may be added, by the exhibition twice over of its quaternary. This is one demonstration, and it is amply sufficient to establish the sense. In the above elements there is room for the evolution of a complicated design in plot and structure, which is much more than sufficient to attach a demonstrative sense to the symbols. It is such an evidence as is more than would be demanded in the case of an allegory which represented an unknown reality, or which made an announcement, the positive truth of which could not be subjected to a test. But the prophetic allegory contains a representation of realities. of a very certain character, namely, events. Here

comes the searching and trying test, and when fulfilled the second grand demonstration. The significations of the signs, with all the manifestation of plot and design which they disclose, which, in a long and complex allegory such as the Revelation, is great, stand in correspondence with a series of events in history, and are registered and checked off one after another by those events. Here is a demonstration of sense which no composition, except the prophetic allegory, can yield. It is a demonstration only to be found within the compass of inspiration. The sense of the signs is here demonstrated, first of all by the combined powers of the language and the allegory which work out this result. The demonstrated sense is a second time demonstrated, and in a much more powerful manner, by a series of events happening which respond and answer to the intimations of the signs thus determined. Here is a demonstration at which science and mathematics must fall prostrate. Neither the one nor the other in their loftiest flights ever conceived the execution of such a problem as this. It is a demonstration which can only exist, and which does exist in the pages of inspiration. It is exhibited in the Revelation in its highest perfection.

But all the three elements above mentioned are requisite to this demonstration. But of the three only two have as yet been in operation, and even these have not been brought to bear on the gigantic problem which really still remains unsolved, with integrity and with full intensity of effect. We refer to the first and the last. The second has hardly been

put in requisition at all. Yet it is indispensably requisite to the demonstration, because it is by it, in combination with the first, that the significations of the signs are fixed with a definiteness and precision, that is absolute. Without the presence of this essential element the sense can only be determined, generally. The interpretations of the hieroglyphic language rendered in one part of Scripture, are competent alone to contribute the general, and by no means the particular sense of symbols in another. It is the allegory itself, with its perceived unity of design, at once in internal subject and in outward form, with the realized exhibition of these a second time in the reduplication of the allegory, and again with the apprehended quaternal structure of it repeated, which moulds the whole composition in unity of form. It is alone upon the recognition in all its parts of this great phenomenon of design, which a complicated prophetic allegory displays, that demonstration can be founded. It is alone upon the sure and stable foundation of a fixed sense, that the massive and ponderous superstructure of demonstration can be built. It is the vainest folly to attempt to raise this magnificent pile on the loose sand of figurative language, as has been shown. It is also vain to try to rear it on the tougher material of the hieroglyphic language itself. The second element above mentioned must be combined with it. It is alone the complication of design displayed in the allegory which sheathes every symbol in it with a sense that is not only fixed but demonstrative. When this result is obtained, there