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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: the world has ever beheld before or since.
In such a state of mind it was impossible for them to look on their old
prophets as true seers, beholding and applying eternal moral laws, and,
therefore, seeing the future in the present and in the past. They must
be the mere utterers of an irreversible arbitrary fate; and that fate
must, of course, be favourable to their nation. So now arose a school
who picked out from their old prophets every passage which could be made
to predict their future glory, and a science which settled when that
glory was to return. By the arbitrary rules of criticism a prophetic
day was defined to mean a year; a week, seven years. The most simple
and human utterances were found to have recondite meanings relative to
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