1874] THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY 265 



to view the latter-day glory in connection with repentance 

 on the part of the people from present sin, and with 

 deliverance from present calamity. The whole course of 

 history possesses to the prophets eyes the unity of a 

 God-given plan. Every turn in the history of the chosen 

 people exemplifies the eternal principles of righteousness 

 and grace by which the immovable kingdom of God is 

 finally to be built up and therefore the prophets are 

 always able to rise from the consideration of God s dealings 

 with their contemporaries to the ideal manifestation of 

 the same divine principles of government in the consum 

 mation of all things. But really between the empirical 

 exemplification and the ideal consummation there lies a 

 long interval. During all this time God s principles of 

 rule and of redemption are the same, and from time to 

 time they appear with increasing clearness, affording ever 

 fresh illustrations or fulfilments of the prophetic ideas. 

 But always the actual historical forms in which these 

 ideas are realised take new shapes, and, when the final 

 consummation comes, and with it that absolute triumph 

 of God s kingdom which constitutes the full fulfilment 

 of the prophecy, it will no doubt come in a way that has 

 never entered into the heart of man. And so you see that, 

 as God s purpose gradually unfolds in human history, the 

 hopes of the prophets may again and again receive partial 

 fulfilments besides the great final fulfilment. But neither 

 the final nor the partial fulfilments will exactly fit into the 

 setting which the prophet drew from his own surroundings. 

 Now these remarks I only throw out as hints of the 

 kind of result that we may expect to find in conformity 

 with the twofold truth of the unity of purpose and the 

 variety of dispensation in God s dealings with men. 

 Such general hints do not solve the difficult question of 

 prophecy ; they only show us how to attack it. The 

 real point that must be solved is how far circumstances of 

 the new dispensation render the hopes of that preceding 

 invalid ; where the line is to be drawn between the 



