things which were to be hereafter. There only they can be learnt;[1] and by the habituation of the mind there seen[errata 1], as they are important to God, to Christ, and, therefore, to the Church, and to the Spirit for the Church; no one having the Spirit so as to be interested in God’s mind about the Church loved of Christ, could be indifferent to them.
But to follow closely the chapters. The fourth
- ↑ History was not written in heaven. I believe that the attempt to interpret prophecy by history has been most injurious to the ascertaining of its real meaning. When we have ascertained, by the aid of the Spirit of Christ, the mind of God, we have, as far as it be history, God’s estimate of events and their explanation. But history is man’s estimate of events, and he has no right to assume that these are in prophecy at all; and it is clear that he must understand prophecy, before he can apply it to any. When he understands it, he has what God meant to give him without going farther, I do not admit history to be, in any sense, necessary to the understanding of prophecy. I get present facts, and God’s moral account of what led to them, and thereby His moral estimate of them: I do not want history to tell me Nineveh or Babylon are ruined, or Jerusalem in the hands of the Gentiles. Of course, where any prophecy does apply to facts, it is a true history of those facts; but it is much more. It is the connection of those facts with the purposes of God in Christ, and whenever any isolated fact, however important in the eyes of man, is taken as the fulfilment of a prophecy, that prophecy is made of private interpretation, and that I believe to be the meaning of that passage. Of course, when any prophecy is fulfilled, the fulfilment is evidence of its truth, but the Christian does not need this; and evidence of truth and interpretation are two very different things.
