The next verse supplies our warning at this eventful moment, and during whatever troubles may arise to put our constancy to the trial: He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all the nations; and then shall the end be. These words also found a fulfilment in the state of things previous to the destruction of Jerusalem. The Gospel was preached in all the empire (von en cincuen), for a witness to all the nations composing the body of the fourth beast (Taσ TIs Over). Then came "the end" of the temple of Jerusalem, and all the institutions of that dispensation. The words predict also what is now going forward, to the blind admiration of multitudes, who little think of the sudden and overwhelming end of this dispensation, which is to follow in the train of Bible and Missionary testimonies. The parallels to these verses are Mark

xiii. 9-13, and Luke xxi. 12—19.

The next passage in St. Matthew is, When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth let him understand:) then let them which be in Judæa flee unto the mountains, &c. In St. Mark it is the same: but in St. Luke it is, When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh; then let them which are in Judæa flee to the mountains. This sufficiently identifies the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet with the armies of Pagan Rome bringing destruction upon Jerusalem.

Here, then, the prophecy gives warning to such disciples as should be in Jerusalem at the time, not to hope for her deliverance, for fall she must: their safety, therefore, could only be in flying out of her. We have seen how graciously an opportunity was afforded them of availing themselves of this warning. Jerusalem should not only fall, but be trodden down for a considerable time, even during the whole of the times of the Gentiles.

Thus it follows, there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people: and they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Those are the "times of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." In them shall be begun the great tribulation, which, beginning in those days of the dispersion of the Jews, shall prove in the end the greatest tribulation that ever has been, or shall be. It shall affect the Jews as a nation, the elect Church from among the Gentiles as an aggregate, and all the children of God as individuals; and it shall endure throughout the whole of the times of the Gentiles. In the course of it, fresh delusions and temptations shall arise;

some of them with such plausible pretensions to a divine origin as to deceive all but the elect, and, if it were possible, even them also. The false Christs and false Prophets, the signs and wonders, predicted to mark this period of tribulation, direct our attention to the great apostasy of Christendom; under which the Jews as a people, and the elect as a church, have been bitterly oppressed: and concerning which the Apostle writes, that it would come "after the working of Satan with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish-speaking lies in hypocrisy, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats."

Among the attempts at delusion to be practised in the course, and it would seem peculiarly towards the close (ver. 22,) of that period, false announcements of the Lord being come already would occupy a prominent place. Against these the elect were warned; and distinctly told that the coming of their Lord would be an event not to be mistaken. Matt. xxiv. 26-28. Upon these verses I adopt and quote the observations of Bishop Horsley:* "Give no credit, says our Lord, to any reports that may be spread that the Messiah is come, that he is in this place or in that: my coming will be attended with circumstances which will make it public at once to all the world; and there will be no need that one man should carry the tidings to another. This sudden and universal notoriety that there will be of our Saviour's last glorious advent, is signified by the image of the lightning, which in the same instant flashes upon the eyes of spectators in remote and opposite stations. And this is all that this comparison seems intended, or indeed fitted, to express. It has been imagined that it denotes the particular route of the Roman armies, which entered Judæa on the eastern side, and extended their conquests westward. But had this been intended, the image should rather have been taken from something which hath its natural and necessary course in that direction. The lightning may break out indifferently in any quarter of the sky; and east and west seem to be mentioned only as extremes and opposites. And, accordingly, in the parallel passage of St. Luke's Gospel we read neither of east nor west, but indefinitely of opposite parts of the heavens: For as the lightning that lighteneth out of the one part under the heaven, shineth into the other part under heaven, so shall also the Son of Man be in his day.' The expression, his day, is remarkable. The original might be more exactly rendered his own day; intimating, as I conceive, that the day, i. e. the time of the Son of Man, is to be exclusively his own; quite

* Sermon ii, on St. Matt. xxiv. 3.

another from the day of those deceivers whom he had mentioned, and therefore quite another from the day of the Jewish war."—And again: "It is probable that the eagle and the carcass was a proverbial image among the people of the East, expressing things inseparably connected by natural affinities and sympathies. Her young ones suck up blood,' says Job, speaking of the eagle; and where the slain is, there is she.' The disciples ask, Where, in what countries, are these calamities to happen, and these miraculous deliverances to be wrought? (Luke xvii. 37.) Our Divine Instructor held it unfit to give further light upon the subject. He frames a reply, as was his custom when pressed with unseasonable questions, which, at the same time that it evades the particular inquiry, might more edify the disciples than the most explicit resolution of the question proposed. 'Wheresoever the carcass is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.' Wheresoever sinners shall dwell, there shall my vengeance overtake them, and there will I interpose to protect my faithful servants. Nothing, therefore, in the similitude of the lightning, or the image of the eagles gathered round the carcass, limits the phrase of our Lord's coming' in the 27th verse of this 24th chapter of St. Matthew, to the figurative sense of his coming to destroy Jerusalem. His coming is announced again in the 30th verse, and in subsequent parts of these same prophecies; where it is of great importance to rescue the phrase from the refinements of modern expositors, and to clear some considerable difficulties, which, it must be confessed, attend the literal interpretation."-Here, therefore, as in other clauses, the prophecy begins with an appropriate warning to the Lord's disciples at the winding-up of the Jewish dispensation: "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; and then swells into a largeness of expression, which embraces, and strikingly predicts the winding-up of this dispensation.*

* I am aware that this is the part of our statement which is charged with unsoundness; and which being, as is alleged, mere arbitrary ingenuity, throws discredit upon all the rest. But here, as elsewhere, it is easier to deny than to disprove. "Scripture prophecy," says Mr. Davison, "is so framed in some of its predictions as to bear a sense directed to two objects; of which structure the predictions concerning the kingdom of David furnish a conspicuous example; and I should say, an unquestionable one, if the whole principle of that kind of interpretation had not been by some disputed and denied. But the principle has met with this ill-acceptance, for no better reason, it should seem, than because it has been injudiciously applied in cases where it had no proper place; or has been suspected, if not mistaken, in its constituent character, as to what it really is. The double sense of prophecy, however, is of all things the most remote from fraud or equivocation, and has its ground of reason perfectly clear. For what is it? Not the convenient latitude of two unconnected senses, wide of each other, and giving room to fallacious ambiguity; but the combination of

The parallels to this clause are Mark xiii. 14-23, and Luke xxi. 20-24.

The next passage in St. Matthew is, 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 heaven 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 another. The period for the commencement of these great and final signs is here distinctly marked, in reference to what has gone before, immediately after the tribulation. In St. Mark it is, In those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, &c. In St. Luke it is, There shall be signs in the sun and in the moon, &c., without any mark of the period, as in the other two. The reason is obvious. The period is sufficiently marked in the preceding words in St. Luke: "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled: and there shall be signs in the sun." And this confirms the identity of the two periods, that tribulation, and the times of the Gentiles. When the tribulation of those long days from Jerusalem's overthrow shall be ended, and the time shall have arrived when Jerusalem is to be restored, and made a praise in the earth, then the sun shall be darkened, &c. What precise

two related, analogous, and harmonizing, though disparate, subjects, each clear and definite in itself; implying a two-fold truth in the prescience, and creating an aggravated difficulty, and thereby an accumulated proof in the completion. So that the double sense of prophecy, in its true idea, is a check upon the pretences of vague and unappropriated prediction, rather than a door to admit them."-So much for the principle generally; and touching its application to this particular prophecy, if it shall be proved (as I think it is in this paper) that the coming of the Son of Man here predicted, cannot possibly be his providential visitation at the destruction of Jerusalem, so that one branch of this prophecy must be admitted to reach forward to the close of the Gentile dispensation; then it remains to be proved that it is inconclusive to assert a similarly extended application of the whole prophecy. One of the examples selected by Mr. Davison, in illustration of the principle above stated, is the prophecy now He says, "The prophecy of the judicial destruction of Jerusalem, with the dissolution of the Jewish economy, symbolizes with that which relates to the final judgment, which will shut up the whole temporal economy of God, at the end of the world. In the New Testament they are united. In this, as in other authentic instances of a double sense, particulars are found belonging exclusively to the one subject or the other: these particulars create a discrimination, but do not violate the general harmony of the things described: the chief propositions and images, and the substance of the prediction, are common to the two, and they are common by the nature of the subjects, which correspond so far in their main attributes as to give a plain ground of fitness and agreement, to the prophecies which join them together in one comprehensive scheme of delineation."-I repeat, it is easier to deny than to disprove the opinion maintained in these very sensible observations.

before us.

events are predicted in these great words I do not dare to say; whether political and ecclesiastical commotions throughout the empire, or real miraculous appearances in the heavenly bodies, or both: the mode of prediction, as we find it in St. Luke, favours the supposition of the former. But whatever they are, they shall usher in the great climax of all, the glorious appearing of the Son of Man. I do not believe that any of the late or present commotions in Europe have fulfilled the signs here predicted, because I cannot subscribe to that view of the prophetic chronology which supposes the times of the Gentiles to have already expired. For this I have many reasons: it will be sufficient at present to assign this one: Jerusalem is still trodden under foot of the Gentiles; whereas, from the terms of the prophecy before us, it appears undeniable that the restoration of the Jews, and the re-establishment of the holy city, either in its actual consummation, or at the least in such obvious progress as cannot be gainsayed, must be contemporaneous with the termination of the times of the Gentiles, which times, we have seen, are identical with the duration of the great tribulation. I thank God, the interests of Jerusalem are attracting increased and increasing attention, and the last great step of this prophecy may be at the door.

Agreeing most cordially with the observation of the learned prelate above quoted, that it is of great importance to rescue the phrase of the Lord's coming, in this 30th verse, from the refinements of modern expositors, I shall here compare the passage with a parallel prediction from the first chapter of the Apocalypse. "Behold," saith the Spirit, by the beloved disciple, "He cometh."-He, the faithful Witness, the First-Begotten of the dead, the Prince of the kings of the earth; He who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God, and his Father -He cometh with clouds: and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, amen! Here, as in the passage before us, we have the Lord Jesus coming in the clouds of heaven, every eye seeing him and the kindreds (ux in both texts) of the earth mourning (xoforra, in both texts) because of him. And we have one additional circumstance predicted: among the spectators of the glorious scene, they who pierced the Son of Man are specified as a distinct group.

Now what coming of the Lord is this? Not his providential visitation at the destruction of Jerusalem; for then, instead of coming in the clouds of heaven, he did not come at all, but by his Spirit he stirred up the hearts of the Roman Emperors to come and bring their armies to destroy Jerusalem; and in