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/22

 must not have been prepared at least by a series of smaller events, the chain of which he already finds commenced, so that its coming (to use the beautiful expression of our wise poet) "casts its shadow before it."

In this sense the politician, the philosopher, the poet, may be said to prophesy. In this sense, aided, too, no doubt, by the superior craft and experience of evil spirits, as the holy fathers of the Catholic Church abundantly prove, the heathen oracles foretold, and foretold correctly, many events.

But who does not see the infinite difference between such predictions as these, whether natural or preter-natural, and the prophecies of our Sacred Scriptures?—prophecies which, made many thousand years ago, foretell the events which are to take place even to the consummation of the world?—prophecies, which foretell what the free will of unborn millions in the remotest ages was foreseen by the mind of God as certain to accomplish?—prophecies, in fine, which not only lay bare the future, but reveal the great and glorious purposes of the Almighty, which He intended to bring to perfection out of a series of acts having no individual reference the one to the other, nor, indeed, ordained as though by a fate inconsistent with the freedom of the