The secret of prophecy is to find what is right, and prophesy that.
It is very simple. What is wrong will go down.
The cosmic spiritual laws are just as accurate, just as sure-footed, as
the laws of gravitation and chemical reaction.
Any institution that is founded on non-facts, any government that is
maintained in violation of plain human rights, any system, any
propaganda, that depends upon cheating, lying, or injustice, is certain
at length to fail.
The certainty of the defeat of Prussian militarism is not based on its
inferiority in numbers, wealth, and resources, but upon the moral
rottenness of its ideas. It will come to grief, not because of its lack
of force—it would make no difference if it were a hundred times
stronger—but because it is based on principles which to humanity are
intolerable.
If the Hohenzollern crowd had met no resistance in Belgium, if they had
conquered Paris as they hoped, if they had crushed England, if they had
realized to the full their dream of dominance over Europe and the whole
world, their structure would have crumbled just the same, because it
would have been reared upon violence, inhumanity, faithlessness, and
fraud.
In the little affairs of a day it seems sometimes as if the wicked
prosper. The gambler is flush, the lecher flourishes, the swindler gets
away with his swag, and the pirate, the assassin, and the robber feast
on their booty. But when this sort of thing is stretched out over any
considerable space of time or territory, so that the cosmic laws, which
move slowly, have a chance, it is sure to break down.
What we call righteousness and justice is just as much a part of nature
as the physical laws. It is just as true and certain that lying brings
disgrace, robbery cannot be made a permanent basis of business,
uncleanness ends in shame, tyranny brings revolution, and cruelty
eventuates in counter-cruelty and insecurity, as that water runs down
hill and flame mounts upward.
It is the glory of the Hebrew that he first saw and made clear to the
world these spiritual verities. His Bible is a book of spiritual
chemistry and physics.
When he said that “the ungodly shall not stand,” “the covenant with hell
shall be disannulled,” “though hand join in hand the wicked shall not go
unpunished,” and “be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap,” he was not indulging in sentiment,
but he had a real vision of cosmic law.
It was the supreme genius of Jesus that He saw the majestic certainty
and fatefulness of this law, and recommended to His followers that they
let it alone, and trust in it.
“Vengeance is mine, I will avenge, saith the Lord.” Time, evolution,
destiny, nature, God—all these flow onward as irresistible tides, and
even the inventive ferocity of an efficient nation gone mad cannot stop
nor delay them.
The Prussian military steam-roller could only get so far, then it had to
stop. The steam-roller of spiritual law carries on.