Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/14

, as well as to enter into those same Divine purposes in what still remained as yet unfulfilled. (See 1 Peter i. 1012.)

The history of the heathen world reveals a similar feeling amongst all nations; the oracles of their false divinities were indeed a poor counterfeit of the prophecies of the true God; still they did homage to a great principle, and bore witness to the fact how eagerly men dive into the future, while they proved the necessity of true prophecies. Amongst the heathen there remained also a large store of the ancient true prophecies along with that portion of other Divine truths, which they still retained, obscured and corrupted as they were by their own vain reasonings and erroneous traditions.

But amongst the people of God, whether under the Mosaic or the Christian dispensations, the most eminent lights of the Church have ever turned their minds to the consideration of prophecy, and in proportion to the magnitude of the events in the sphere of which they were placed, have they striven to examine the relations between such events and prophecy. And assuredly they were right in doing