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

*Sermon II. on St Matt. xxiv. 3.

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 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 carcase 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 carcase 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

6

carcase, limits the phraes 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.*

*

66

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

The parallels to this clause are Mark xiii. 1423, and Luke xxi. 20-24.

The next passage in St Matthew is, "Immedi

:

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 two related, analogous, and harmonising, though disparate, subjects, each clear and definite in itself; implying a twofold 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 before us. He says, "The prophecy of the judicial destruction of Jerusalem, with the dissolution of the Jewish economy, symbolises 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.

B

ately 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 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 events are predicted in these great words I do not dare to say; whether political and