pated: we are surprised-we trace the hand of God-we acknowledge a wondrous fulfilment to this prophecy of Jesus-when we find the war brought to a close, within a year from the commencement of the siege! For the sake of his elect, his darling pious, God (who rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm, who maketh even the wrath of man to raise him) shortened, unexpectedly, a war which otherwise had been a war of extirpation.

Behold, brethren! a glorious token of your master's truth in his promise of a second coming. In the midst of a prophecy about that coming, you find an incidental prophecy of invasion to the Holy Land-of siege and destruction to Jerusalem and its temple. This latter prophecy, already and incontestably, has been accomplished. The ruins of Jerusalem, now remaining, are monuments of its fulfilment. All history-the Pagan Tacitus-the Jew Josephus, not less unequivocally than the Christian writer

-are witnesses to its exact completion, even in minor circumstances.

Yet-who can deny it-in order to be able to foresee this desolation of the Holy city, Jesus must have had an illumination more than human. Near forty years before Jerusalem came to be compassed about with armies, not only was his prediction uttered-himself had died. At that day the temple seemed as durable-Jerusalem as likely to continue-as London, Paris, Philadelphia, now does. The subversion of the Jewish state was an event in itself quite as improbable as is the return to earth of Jesus Christ-his reappearing to take unto him his great power and to reign.

Since then my master truly foretold the one event, I trust his foretelling of the other. Yeshere is the foothold for my soul-here my warrant for hope to hear a trump, which, at once shall awake me from the tomb and announce the reappearing of my Lord-here the anchor to my spirit, my certainty that as Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, so to them that look for him he shall appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation!

45

LECTURE II.

MATTHEW Xxiv. 23-31.

"Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo! Here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold! I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold! He is in the desert; go not forth: Behold! He is in the secret chambers, believe it not. For, as the lightning cometh out of the East, and shineth even unto the West; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For, wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from Heaven, and the powers of the Heavens shall be shaken.

"And THEN shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in

Heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth

mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven, with power and great glory. And He shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet; and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of Heaven to the other.

THE earlier part of this prophecy we considered on the morning of the last Lord's day. The case we found to stand thus:

In

The Saviour predicted the ruin of the temple. The by-standing disciples-who were Jews— could not conceive that this ruin would ever take place, except with the ruin of the world. And hence they eagerly inquired, "When shall these things be? What shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?" answer, and by way of giving them to understand that much was yet to happen before his coming or the end of the world, the Redeemer foretold the appearance of adventurers pretending to his office-gave warning of manifold commotions-predicted chilling trials to his Church-stated an eminent antecedent to his reappearance, the announcement of his Gospel to the nations universally-and then, lest at the

approach of overthrow to the temple, his people might lie still, not saving themselves by flight, because expectant of their Master's return to overthrow the whole world, admonished his hearers, when they should "see the abomination of desolation in the Holy Land," to flee unto the mountains, making no avoidable delay.

At this point-at the incidental prediction of destruction to Jerusalem, Christ insists, a second time, upon THE DANGER OF DELUSION.

We alleged, a minute ago, that when Jerusalem came to be compassed about with armies, the probability was that many of its citizens would trust to the Messiah's immediate appearance; and their fears quieted by this fond trustwould remain in the city till escape was impossible. The probability turned out a fact. For what are the words of the Heathen historian, Tacitus, when he relates the story of Jerusalem's desolation? "Few were alarmed. The most were possessed with a persuasion it was contained in prophecies in the hands of their priests, that at that very time the East