"This is our Friend: we have longed for Him, we have waited for Him: now He is come, and He will save us: Hallelujah!" Then shall doleful cries be heard from on board the great gay vessel; for everlasting destruction shall be her portion, and that of all who belong to her.

66

This last scene had made an impression upon the apostle's heart, which he was eager to communicate, and the words we have been considering contain the enraptured utterance of that eagerness: Behold, he cometh with clouds!" &c. They have no other connexion in the context. Where, where is the man who can contemplate the truths revealed to the apostle, without catching a spark of the apostolical fire here kindled ? In all light there is heat. The man who can proceed in a cold investigation of these revealed glories of God in Christ Jesus, without finding himself once and again hurried away into a warmth of devotional enthusiasm, which bids defiance to all rules of logic, has more reason to be ashamed of the deadness of his heart, than to pride himself upon the soundness of his understanding. This exuberance of feeling, however, arising from the overflowing fulness of the transporting subject, is a very different thing from that vapid excitement which is begun, continued, and ended in emptiness. Stimulants are good and healthful when they have substantial, nutritious food to act upon; but when administered alone, they can only produce drunkenness or fever.

It is further to be remarked, that neither in the

24th chapter of St Matthew, nor in the first of the Apocalypse, is there any mention made of the resurrection of the body. Elsewhere, indeed, the resurrection of those that are Christ's at the same period is predicted as certainly to take place; but in the passages now under consideration, the spectators of the advent appear to refer exclusively to the living in that day. The circumstance of the Jews who pierced him being specified, contains no objection to this opinion; for it is the nation that is spoken of, as such; to the Jews, as a nation, the promises of restoration and prosperity are made: not to the generation who were alive in the day when the prophecy was uttered, whether by Moses or Isaiah, or Ezekiel or John, but to the nation as a continuous aggregate; and those prophecies shall be literally fulfilled in that generation of the nation which shall be alive upon the earth in the day when the Lord doeth these things. Upon that nation (generation after generation) has been visited the vengeance of His blood whom they pierced. It is true of the present generation of Jews, that they are suffering for, or because of, Him whom they pierced; and the generation of them who shall be alive when He returns shall see Him whom they have pierced. They shall recognise Him, in the glory of Jehovah, as that same Jesus whom they crucified, and whom they have for so many hundred years spurned and blasphemed; and perceiving that he returns their Friend, causing mercy to triumph over justice, they will be overwhelmed with mingled shame and remorse,

and fear and gratitude, and faith and love. No event short of this can fulfil the words of the Lord by the prophet Zechariah: "In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord, before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication: and they shall look upon Me, whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart, and their wives apart. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness," (Zech. xii. 8-14, xiii. 1.) That no such favour was shown to the Jews as that which is here promised, nor any such penitential mourning awakened among them as that which is here described, at the time that the Messiah was pierced by them, is matter of notoriety. The facts of the case were precisely the reverse. Instead of Jerusalem being defended, it was destroyed; instead of penitent bitterness of spirit amongst the inhabitants thereof, there was the

most hardened obduracy. Yet the single clause of the prophecy which says, "They shall look on him whom they have pierced," is quoted (John xix. 37) as applicable at the moment of the crucifixion;— applicable, however, it is manifest, as identifying the person crucified with the person predicted by Zechariah, but not as supplying the fulfilment of the whole strain of Zechariah's prophecy. That remains to be fulfilled in the day when the crucified One shall re-appear upon the earth.

With this important corroboration of our exposition, we return to Matt. xxiv. Having concluded this prophecy, our Lord proceeds to instruct His disciples, by a parable, how they might be sure of the final accomplishment of all he had said, (vers. 32-34,) "When you see the fig-tree bud, you hail it as a sign and pledge of the summer and harvest. So, also, when you shall see the destruction of the temple, the dispersion of the Jewish nation and the beginning of the great tribulation, you may hail all these things as a sign and pledge of the finishing of that tribulation, and the coming of the Son of man at the end of it." "All these things," in verse 33, must be thus limited; for if they be understood to include more than the beginnings of the prophecy, there will be no force in the parable; for "all these things would then include as signs those very events of which they were to be the signs. "All these things" which the disciples were to see (ver. 34) and hail as signs, correspond, therefore, with the budding of the fig-tree, and mean the dispersion of the Jews

and the beginning of the sorrows. "Verily I say to you," added our Lord, "all these things shall be fulfilled the fig-tree shall bud-before this generation passes away." As if He had said, "The whole prophecy, in all its periods, is aptly represented by the whole season of a fig-tree. While I speak, it is winter; the fig-tree is bare, the prophecy has no fulfilment. Before this generation of men shall pass away, it will be spring; the fig-tree shall bud, the prophecy shall have a commenced fulfilment in the destruction of Jerusalem. This you, my disciples, shall see. From this you may argue surely, and expect confidently, the summer and harvest. The fig-tree shall blossom and bear fruit; the prophecy shall make progress in fulfilment, the great tribulation shall run its course, and the Son of Man shall come. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

We now proceed to the practical application of this prophecy, as pressed by our Lord, under the two heads of watchfulness and diligence, to the end of the chapter, and enforced by two parables in the chapter following.

"As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be; for as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and knew not, until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."