14 THE UNITED STATES IN PROPHECY.
governments has received recognition at the hands of
pen suilicient to satisfy any ambition. Does the
God of Heaven also recognize it, and has he spoken
concerning it 2 In other words, does the prophetic
pen, which has so fully delineated the vise and prog-
ress of all the other great nations of the carth, pass
this one by unnoticed 2 What are the probabilities
in this matter As the student of prophecy, in
common with all mankind, looks with wonder upon
the unparalicled vise and progress of this nation, he
cannot repress the conviction that the hand of Prov-
idence has been at work in this quiet but mighty
revolution. And this conviction he shares in com-
mon with others.
Governor Pownal, from whom a quotation has al-
ready been presented, speaking of the establish-
ment of this country as a free and sovereign power,
calls it—
“A revolution that has stranger marks of diene tnter-
postition superseding the ordinary course of human at-
fairs, than any other event which this world has experi-
enced.”
De Tocqueville, a French writer, speaking of our
separation from England, says:
“It might seem their folly, but was veally their fate;
or, yather, the providence of God, who has doubtless a
work for them to do 1 which the nussive materiality of
the Paglich character would have been too ponderous a
deasl weight upon their progress.”
Geo. Alfred Townsend, speaking of the misfortunes
that have attended the other governments on this
continent (* New World and OL” p. 635), saysi—
“The history of the United States was separated by a
beneticent Providence far from the wild and cruel his-
tory of the rest of the continent.”
PROBABILITIES CONSIDERED,
Again he says:—
“This hemisphere was laid away for no one race.”
Mr. J. M. Foster, in a sermon before the Reformed
Presbyterian Church in Cineinnati, O., Nov. 30, 1882,
bore the following explicit testimony to the fact that
the hand of Providence has been remarkably dis-
played in the establishment of this government: —
“Let us look at the history of our own nation. The
Mediator long ages ago prepared this land as the home
of civil and religious liberty. He made it a Lund flowing
with milk and honey. He stored our mountuins with
coal, and iron, and copper, and silver, and gold. He
prepared our fountains of oil, planted our forests, leveled
our plains, enriched our valleys, and heautified them
with Jakes and rivers. He guided the Mayflower over
the sea, so that the Pilgrim Fathers landed safely on
Plymouth Rock. Me directed the course of our civiliza-
tion, so that we have become a great nation.”
If Providence has been thus conspicuously present
in our history, we may look for some mention of
this government in that Book which records the
workings of Providence among mankind, On what
conditions have other nations found a place in the
prophetic record? First, if they have acted any
prominent part in the world’s history; and secondly,
and above all, if they have had jurisdiction over, or
maintained any relations with, the people of God.
In the records of the Bible and the records of secular
history, we find data from which to deduce this rule
respecting the prophetic mention of carthly govern-
ments; namely, Whenever the relations of God's
people to any nation are such that a true history of
the former, which is the ohject of all revelation, could
not be given without a notice of the latter, such na-
tion is mentioned in prophecy,