o study history with Jesus Christ at the center of it all is nourishing, edifying, and humbling. Listen to what the apostle Paul blurted out after rehearsing the history of his people, the sons of Abraham: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and His ways past finding out!" The excerpt reprinted below, from a chaplain in the Confederate army, is the product of long and loving meditation on the inscrutable ways of God.
"The history of the church and of the world, regarded as a whole, is but the evolution of the eternal purpose of that God who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. Deep in the secrets of His own breast is hid the united plan, from which the pattern is gradually unfolded on the tangled web of human affairs. As that decree is one, so history is a unit. And as God gives no explanation of His purpose, except by its unfolding, the great whole cannot be fully understood until it is completed. Revelation gives us the key to unlock the meaning of many parts, and it has told us what is to be the final result. Hence we may derive two truths: one is, that no man but the believer is capable of understanding the philosophy of history. He who learns from the Scriptures, and he alone, can possibly understand the meaning of events or interpret them aright. Your infidel historian must needs blunder on in Egyptian midnight. The other is, that the science of history will only attain that philosophic completeness which some have desired and prophesied for it, after the course of human events is ended. We are now in the position of soldiers in some mighty host, moving in many detachments to effect the evolutions of a great commander who overlooks the whole field from a separate point. Wrapped in the smoke and dust of our own conflict, we comprehend little of the great design, and are pushed on in many movements of which we cannot guess the intention. Sometimes, perhaps, we imagine that we are bearing an undue share of dangers and hardships for no adequate purpose. Sometimes we complain that we are left in useless inactivity; and sometimes the lifting up of the battle cloud, or the distant huzza of our brethren in arms, reveals to us that a partial victory is won. But it is only after the field is fought, as we review it in the leisure of our triumph, that we will understand the complicated whole and appreciate the perfection of the plan.
"There are parts of the great design which we are able to read in the unfoldings of Providence, and we learn from them that the elements are gradually conspiring to the final triumph, and that, subsidiary to the main movement, God is accomplishing many beneficent effects, and chastising nation after nation for apostasy or idolatry. Already we can see why it was that God did not permit Islam to overwhelm the Christianity of the East as long as it was worthy of preservation, and why He made the infidel invincible by all the efforts of popish Europe in the Crusades. It was that the Islamic power might be at hand to divert Rome from the murderous design of trampling out the life of Protestantism, and might thus act as the unconscious protector of God's cause . . . We can even now understand why Wolfe conquered before Quebec, and the fair domain of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi was transferred from France to England. This event substantially transferred the continent from Rome to Protestantism. There was a youth of fiery passions and energy in India in the 18th century who was on the verge of suicide; but Providence diverted the design. He entered the military service of the infant East India Company, then struggling weakly against the superior arts and arms of France. Again he was on the verge of engaging in the war of the American Revolution, but by an accident was detained in India. These two providential incidents gave to India Lord Clive, the successful opposer of the French in India, the victor of Plassey, the founder of the splendid dominion of Britain in the East. And at the same time they detained out of America a man who, by replacing sloth and incapacity with genius and burning activity, might have turned the doubtful scale of war against us. Thus, then, did God probably decide that America should be independent and republican, and that the mighty East should fall under the control of a Protestant instead of a popish power. In all these instances we see that the means are gradually prepared to install Messiah as King of kings.
"And again, there are stages in the drama at which a resting point is reached, and one part of the plan as it were completed. From such a stage we may look back and comprehend much of the preceding events. Such a point was the Christian era, preeminently, when all the results of four thousand years conspired to bring in that fullness of time which was needful for Christ's appearance, and all the moral influences of the civilized nations seemed to arrange themselves in a solemn pomp around Judea as the center of the world.
"Yet, when we comprehend these things, we only catch glimpses of the divine meaning. These are parts of His ways, but the thunder of His power who can understand? To comprehend fully the intent of the divine dealings, to read the vast plot from its inception to its consummation, this must be one of the studies of heaven. When we look back thence upon the field fought and won, when we have before us the finished whole, and above all, when we have Him into whose hand all power in heaven and on earth is given, to explain to us the eternal plan, then we shall know fully what is the teaching of history."
