Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. The occasion and object of this Essay will be explained by the following Circular, issued in June, 1851: " Premiums Offered For Three Essays On The CharacterisTics AND LAWS OF PROPHETIC SYMBOLS. " The views of the Characteristics and Lava of Prophetic Symbolization, presented in the Theological and Literary Journal, have attracted the attention of many persons in different parts of the country, especially of those in the Sacred Office, excited curiosity and investigation, and induced the feeling that they are entitled to a careful consideration by the students of the Bible. "It is known that a very considerable number have become satisfied of the accuracy of these laws, and deem it of great moment that they should be generally understood and adopted. Another class, who regard them with much interest, and find themselves at a loss how to confute them, or set aside the constructions to which they lead, nevertheless, hesitate to give them their full assent, and before they finally determine, desire to know what can be said against them by the advocates of other systems of interpretation. A third class reject them, not, so far as is known, on the ground of any direct evidence of their inaccuracy, but because the results to which they lead conflict with the views they have been accustomed to enter chapter{Section 4tain of the administration God ia hereafter to exercise over the world. "A strong wish is felt, therefore, by many of these several classes, that the validity of these laws should be tried in some form that will enable inquirers generally, and especially such as have not leisure for a minute investigation, to decide more satisfactorily in respect to them; and for that purpose a fund lias been subscribed to offer as premiums for three essays on the s...