Recent Expositions of Daniel. By Prof. W. H. Green, D. D. [pp. 397-424]

Recent Expositions of Daniel.
information respecting the next, and so on till the last stage is
reached. It is thus that God led his people along, stage by
stage, during the entire period of his supernatural revelation,
supplying at each point just that measure of instruction which
was necessary in existing emergencies and for guidance in
present duty, and careful moreover to keep ever before them
the final issue to which all was tending. With the emergencies and wants belonging to future stages in the uhnfolding of
the divine plan they had no present concern. These were accordingly reserved until the occasion for them had arisen.
Each period was for the most part instructed simply in the two
things which were then most necessary to be known, the issue
of that particular stage of providential movement which was
then transacting, coupled with the final issue of the whole
scheme of which it formed an integral part. When that stage
is ended, many more stages may yet remain before the universal plan is perfected; and the long interval previously unsuspected between that and the grand consummation will
begin to appear. And thus what' the prophets of one age
have set in juxtaposition, will by the disclosures of subsequent
prophets or by the evolutions of history be resolved into their
separate constituents and arranged in their actual chronological succession.
In the blessing of the patriarch Jacob, Shiloh's coming is
linked with the settlement of the tribes in Canaan, an event
which formed the next important stage in the accomplishment of patriarchal hopes. The prophet Isaiah at successive
conjunctures of his ministry couples the advent of the Messiah
with the deliverance from the Syrian invasion, the Assyrian
invasion and the Babylonish captivity, according as one or
the other of these was for the time the most prominent object in the experience of the present, or the anticipations of
the future. The fall of Babylon and the overthrow of Edomn,
are by Isaiah combined with the final judgment on an ungodly world, and by Habakkuk and Obadiah with its complemIent the triumphant establishment of the Lord's kingdom
over all the earth. This feature of prophecy is of such constant recurrence that it is a recognized principle of interpretation that every prediction of temporal good contains, either
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