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the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then shall he say also unto them on his left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Herein have we revealed to us the hidden things of the Almighty; the glory, the circumstances, the sentence, and the name of the judge who shall pronounce their final doom upon the evil and the good. But who can know these things of God, save God himself, and those to whom he hath vouchsafed to reveal them. Such then also ought to be our conclusion here. There is no sign of falsehood or of ignorance-no trace of enthusiasm ; no wild workings of the imagination; no gaudy metaphors-no lofty language

-no artificial rhetoric to shew how he laboured in the conception and utterance of his thoughts. Jesus speaks as one familiar with the scene. The subject seems within his comprehension and his grasp. There is no darkness or indistinctness in his picture. Truth and light and reality are impressed upon every part; and we feel in the composure, and the simplicity, and the minuteness and the reasonableness of the delineation, a convincing evidence, that he was speaking according to his experience, and knew both what he did say and whereof he did affirm. But strong as this

internal evidence is, it is yet a sort of evidence to which the sceptic will refuse to bend his stubbornness or waywardness. He will perhaps tell us, that, however probable, this prophecy is as yet unfulfilled, and may never be fulfilled at all. Or he will transmute it into a mere figurative representation of the existence of a future state of retribution, which he will say might have been learnt from philosophy alone. We must bring the infidel, therefore, to some class of prophecies where there is no room for conjecture, and where the certainty of the prediction having preceded the event, and the certainty of the event having fulfilled the prediction, leave him no other conclusion than this-that the utterer of the prediction foresaw and spake of the event, ere it did come to pass,

Now of this third species of prophecies, we shall find two instances most particularly preeminent, in the declarations which our Lord is recorded to have made; first, with regard to the utter and eternal destruction of the city of the Jews; and, secondly, with regard to the establishment and perpetuity of the Christian Church. These prophecies comprehend the whole period of time and events from the moment in which they are said to have been uttered, down to the final and universal triumph of the kingdom of Christ. Part of both has already been fulfilled. Part of both is

fulfilling under our own eyes, and part still remains incomplete; and thus altogether they present a chain of proof which must bind down the infidel to meet the real question and leave him no subterfuge or escape, by urging the possibility of deception. To these two prophecies, then, it is that I would now turn your attention, and though both have been so frequently illustrated, I must confess that I never turn to them again without gathering new confidence in my faith, and new hope in my calling.

1. To know the future, as it relates to this world, is, in general, only to know more of the wickedness and wretchedness of this world than other men do, and thus to add one more to the many complicated and unavoidable causes of human grief. It was so with the man of God when standing before Hazael, and foreboding the evil which he would bring upon Israel, he fixed his countenance upon him stedfastly until he wept. It was so with Jesus when, standing before Jerusalem, he foresaw that her house would be left unto her desolate.-" When he was come near,' says the Evangelist St. Luke," "he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from

f Luke xix. 41.

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thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round about, and keep thee in on every side; and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation." In those days, as he afterwards observes, "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 under foot of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

The accomplishment of this prophecy of our Saviour in the full and final destruction of Jerusalem and her inhabitants and in their present state, forms one of the most interesting and instructive portions of the history of the world which can fall under the contemplation of a Christian, and it is this fulfilment which we are now to proceed to consider, so far as it may tend to confirm our faith and improve our virtue. To enter into all the various and minute particulars which were foretold and suffered, would carry me far beyond the limits of custom and propriety. It will be enough, to make a few remarks upon some of

Luke xxi. 23.

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the most singular and striking circumstances, and then to draw from them those instructions and warnings which they so powerfully enforce.

First of all, then, it is impossible not to mark the care and goodness of God in recording the fulfilment as well as the words of this memorable prophecy. We have before observed, that, to give to the completion of any prophecy its full force as an argument in favour of the prophet's divine authority, it would be better that the completion should be recorded by some individual distinct from the promulgator of the prediction itself, and the more unconnected the two individuals are, the more conspicuous will be the testimony. Now this is most completely the case here. The same Providence by which these events were made known unto Jesus, and the same Spirit by which he was commissioned to reveal them to mankind, raised up from among the Jews themselves, very a being, who was as yet unborn when the prediction was delivered, to relate its accomplishment in every part, and confirm to the latest generations the truth of the Gospel. Josephus was by birth an Israelite, and by the accidents of his life an eye-witness of all the misery which befel his country and his brethren, and so clear and comprehensive is the account which he has given us of the nature of their sufferings, that there is not one single expression of our Saviour, in the

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