Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus," says Yahweh, whose name is the God of hosts.
Yet who dare predict the issue? Will God permit that scourge to come? Will he prevail? What would be the extent of our sufferings or loss? How would our commerce or our Empire be impaired? Would it be dismembered? Since no man can affirm anything as to this which is close at hand, since none of us would dare to affirm in God’s Name, in regard to any one stage of all this future, that this or that would or would not happen, then let people have at least the modesty of the magicians of Egypt, and seeing in God’s prophets those absolute predictions of a future, such as their own wisdom, under circumstances far more favorable, could not dare to make, own; “This is the finger of God” Exodus 8:19. Not we alone. We see all Europe shaken; we see powers of all sorts, heaving to and fro; we see the Turkish power ready to dissolve, stayed up, like a dead man, only by un-Christian jealousies of Christians. Some things we may partially guess at.