The spirit of the world asks first, Is it safe? secondly, Is it true?  The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it true? secondly, Is it safe?  The spirit of the world asks first, Is it prudent? secondly, Is it right?  The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it right? secondly, Is it prudent?  Taken as a whole, the prophetic order of the Jewish Church remains alone.  It stands like one of those vast monuments of ancient days, with ramparts broken, with inscriptions defaced, but stretching from hill to hill, conveying in its long line of arches the pure rill of living water over deep valley and thirsty plain, far above all the puny modern buildings which have grown up at its feet, and into the midst of which it strides with its massive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic proportions, unrivalled by any erection of modern time.

The predictions of the future by the Prophets of Judaea were far higher in their character than those which come occasionally to mankind through dreams and presentiments.  Yet no doubt they proceeded from the same essentially Iranian faculty.  This also is asserted by the Dean of Westminster, who says that there is a power of divination granted in some inexplicable manner to ordinary men, and he refers to such instances as the prediction of the discovery of America by Seneca, that of the Reformation by Dante, and the prediction of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the apparition of twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood four hundred years before its actual accomplishment.  If such presentiments are not always verified, neither were the predictions of the Prophets always fulfilled.  Jonah announced, in the most distinct and absolute terms, that in forty days Nineveh should be destroyed.  But the people repented, and it was not destroyed.  Their predictions of the Messiah are remarkable, especially because in speaking of him and his time they went out of the law and the spirit of the law, and became partakers of the spirit of the Gospel.  The Prophets of the Jews, whatever else we deny to their predictions, certainly foresaw Christianity.  They describe the coming of a time in which the law should be written in the heart, of a king who should reign in righteousness, of a prince of peace, of one who should rule by the power of truth, not by force, whose kingdom should be universal and everlasting, and into which all nations of the earth should flow.  What the Prophets foresaw was not times nor seasons, not dates nor names, not any minute particulars.  But they saw a future age, they lived out of their own time in another time, which had not yet arrived.  They left behind them Jewish ceremonialism, and entered into a moral and spiritual religion.  They dropped Jewish narrowness and called all mankind brethren.  In this they reach the highest form of foresight, which is not simply to predict a coming event, but to live in the spirit of a future time.