also at a later period led the Jews captive into all nations. Whatever were the motives which led the enemies of the Jews to adopt this singular system of policy, in following it out, they only fulfilled the appointment of heaven: and the kings of Assyria and Babylon, and the emperors of Rome, although they meant it not so in their hearts, yet by the peculiar sufferings which they brought upon the captive nation, were the instruments of accomplishing the prophecies contained in its sacred books. Moses, amongst other curses which were to overtake the children of Israel in case of disobedience, mentions this: "I will make thy cities waste, and I will bring the land into desolation; and thine enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished The Lord shall bring against thee a nation from far, and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down. And ye shall be plucked off the land whither thou goest to possess it; and the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other."* The frequent captivities and dispersions of the Jews corresponded exactly to the words of the curse; and this singular punishment has been repeated as often as the sins of the nation called for the judgments of heaven. It might have been expected that, by these frequent dispersions, the whole race of the Jews would be confounded amongst other nations. But it is most remarkable, that although distinguished from all other people by being scattered over the face of the earth, they remain distinguished also by their religion and customs; and although every where found, they are every where separated from those around them. I speak not of the ten tribes carried away by Esarhaddon, who were so far estranged from the true God before they left their own land, that they easily adopted the idolatry of the nations to which they were led captive, and so ceased to be a people.t But I speak of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, composing what was properly called the kingdom of Judah, which adhered to the family of David after Israel had rebelled against them, to which the promise of the Messiah had been restricted by the patriarch Jacob, and in which the fulfilment of the prophecies concerning the fortunes of the Jewish nation is to be looked for. Now we know that when Judah was carried captive by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, the captives did not worship the gods of the conquerors. Daniel and other great men were raised up by God to preserve the spirit of piety, and the fortitude of the servants of heaven. And by a concurrence of circumstances which the providence of God combined to fulfil his pleasure, those who were for the God of Israel received an invitation to return to Jerusalem, and to rebuild the temple. The edict of Cyrus king of Persia contained these words: "The Lord of heaven hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem. Who is there among you of all his people? His God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel." It was under the character of the servants of God, by which character they were distinguished from their idolatrous neighbours, that the Jews returned; and the calamities which they had endured • Levit. xxvi. 31, 32; Deut. xxviii. passim. + Ezra i. 2, 3. during their captivity, seem to have cured that proneness to idolatry, which the more ancient prophets so often reprove. All that returned are spoken of in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah as zealous for the worship of the true God. Their descendants, who settled and multiplied in the Holy Land, never showed any inclination to worship idols. They endured a severe persecution under Antiochus, because they would not submit to the worship which he prescribed; and one of the causes which incensed the Romans against them, was their abhorrence of the gods of the empire. Since their dispersion by Titus and by Adrian, they have never joined in heathen, Christian, or Mahometan worship. Their rites, burdensome as they are, and contemptible as they appear in the eyes of strangers, have been religiously observed by the whole nation. A sullen, uncomplying covetous spirit has conspired with the singularity of their rites to render them odious and ridiculous. The character of a Jew is marked in every corner of the earth; and one can find no words which so literally express the condition of this people, as the words uttered more than three thousand years ago by their own lawgiver. "These curses shall come upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever; and thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee."* In this wonderful manner have the Jews, whose native land is still trodden down of the Gentiles, been preserved in all parts of the earth a distinct people. But the prediction brings into our view the prospect of a better time: "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled;" which, in plain grammatical construction, implies, that when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, Jerusalem shall no longer be trodden down. Our Lord is referring to the latter part of Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks: "The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and the end thereof shall be with a flood; and-he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate ;" or, as I am assured by the best authority, it may be rendered, "upon the desolator." Now this consummation, what the Septuagint calls ή συντέλεια του καιρου, is to be learned from other parts of the book of Daniel, in which there is a most circumstantial prophecy of the fate of the great empires of the world, and amongst the rest of the empire of the Romans, who were the desolators of Judea. A great part of that prophecy has been fulfilled. Learned men have traced so striking a coincidence between the words of Daniel and the history of the world, as is sufficient to impress every candid mind with the divine inspiration of this prophet, highly favoured of the Lord, and to beget a full conviction, that every word which he has spoken will in due time be accomplished. When that will be, or how it will be, we know not. But as the events that have already happened have reflected the clearest light upon former parts of the prophecy, we may rest assured that the end, when it arrives, will explain those parts which are still dark, and that there are methods in reserve, by which the times of the Dan, ii. and vii. * Deut. xxviii. 37. 46. † Dan. ix. 26, 27. Gentiles, that which is determined upon the desolator, all the purposes of God's providence respecting the kingdoms which have arisen out of the Roman empire, shall be fulfilled. It is perfectly agreeable to our Lord's words, to consider the return of the Jews to their own land as connected with this end, the fulfilment of the times of the Gentiles: and when we take into our view other parts of scripture, hardly any doubt is left in our minds that this was his meaning. Moses, when he threatens the Jews with dispersion, gives notice, that if, in their captivity, they returned to the Lord, he would gather them from the nations to which he had scattered them: "And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God." You find this hope expressed by David, by Solomon, by Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Accordingly the two tribes who remembered the God of their fathers, in fulfilment of this promise, as Nehemiah interprets their deliverance, were gathered from their captivity. After their return, the same threatenings of dispersion were denounced against them if they disobeyed, and the same promises of being brought back if they repented. Zechariah, who prophesied after the return, says, "I will gather all nations against Jerusalem, and the city shall be taken." But he says also, the day is coming when "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."t And this is agreeable to the words of more ancient prophets; for God says by Jeremiah, " Though I make a full end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee;"‡ and by Amos, "I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled out of the land which I have given them." These prophecies, and many others of the same import, open to our view a time when the Jews are to be brought back from captivity. Their return from Babylon, which was a fulfilment of their own prophecies, is a pledge that the greater promise of an everlasting settlement in their own land shall be fulfilled also. Their being to this day a distinct people, separate from all others, renders the fulfilment of the prophecy possible, and seems intended as a standing miracle to keep alive in the world the faith of this event. Our Lord, at the very time when he foretells the destruction of the holy city, and the second long captivity of the Jews, intimates, by his mode of expression, that it was not to be perpetual; and his apostle Paul, to whom Jesus, after his ascension, revealed the whole counsel of God, delights to dwell upon this thought-"I would not, brethren," he says to the Romans, " that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in part has happened to Israel, till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved."|| What a glorious view is here presented of the universal kingdom of the Messiah, which is at length to comprehend even the children of those who slew him! What a consistency and grandeur in the conduct of divine Providence with regard to the Jews, that people Levit. xxvi. 44. †Zech. xiv. 2: xii. 9, 10. + Jer. xxx. 11. whom God formed for himself to show forth his praise! Raised up at first as a light in a dark place-retaining the knowledge and worship of the true God amidst the idolatry of the nations-keeping in their oracles the hope of the Saviour of mankind-carrying by their dispersions these oracles, this knowledge and hope, through the whole earth, and thus rendering the Messiah the desire of all nations-exhibiting in their singular misfortunes the holiness and the power of their God-a monument to the world in their present state, that Jesus is able to take vengeance of his enemies-and yet preserved, even in the midst of that punishment which they endure for obstinacy and infidelity, to receive Christ as a nation, and thus to be the future instruments of the conversion of the whole world! When this people, by the out-stretched arm of the Almighty, shall be brought back in his time from the lands where they now sojourn, to that land which, in the beginning, he chose for them, and Jerusalem, which is now trodden down of the Gentiles, shall be delivered to the Jews; when every prophecy in their books shall be found to conspire most exactly with the words spoken by Christ and his apostles, and all shall receive a striking accomplishment in events most interesting to the whole universe-what eye will be so sealed as to exclude this light, what mind so hardened as not to yield to a conviction which the infinite knowledge and power of God will then appear to have united in producing! Every charge of partiality in the Lord of nature, which the superficial infidel is hasty to bring forward, shall then be swallowed up in the full exposition of that great scheme which is now carrying forward for the final salvation of all the children of God, and every tongue will join in that expression of exalted devotion with which the Apostle Paul shuts up this subject-"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor ?”* 8. I mentioned, as the last subject of our Lord's prophecies, the final discrimination of the righteous and the wicked at the day of judgment. This great event is foretold under similitudes, in plain words, without hesitation, with solemnity, with minuteness. The veil is in some measure removed, and we, whose views are generally confined to the events of the little spot which we inhabit, are enabled by the great Prophet to look forward to the end of the world. He has, indeed, hidden the time from our eyes, but he has minutely described every other circumstance. The clearness of his predictions upon such a subject distinguishes him from every other teacher who had appeared before his time, and affords a presumption of his divine. character. But this is not the place for enlarging upon these predictions, and I mention them at present only to state the connection between them and the prophecy which we have been considering. The darkening of the sun, and moon, and stars-the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven-his sending forth his angels with a trumpet, and gathering his elect from the four winds; all these circumstances bring to our minds a day more awful and important than the destruction of Jerusalem, or any of its immediate consequences. And • Rom, xi. 33, 34. although it is possible, and agreeable to the analogy of Scripture language, to find a meaning for the various expressions here used, in the dissolution of the Jewish state, in the general publication of the gospel after that event, and the great accession of converts which it contributed to bring to Christianity-yet we know that these are the very expressions by which our Lord and his apostles have described that day, when all who have lived upon the face of the earth shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Several commentators have been of opinion that there is here, in addition to the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, a direct prophecy of the day of judgment. But the limitation of the time of the fulfilment to the existence of the generation then alive, is an unanswerable objection to this opinion; and, therefore, I consider the latter part of this prediction as a specimen given by our Lord of a prophecy with a double sense. We found that, in the Old Testament, the language of the prophet is often so contrived as to apply at once to two events, the one near and local, the other remote and universal. Thus David, in describing his own sufferings, introduces expressions which are a literal description of the sufferings of the Messiah, and are applied as such by the Evangelists; and the words in which he paints the peaceful reign of Solomon, received a literal accomplishment in the kingdom of the Prince of Peace. So here the Messiah, who often, in other respects, copies the manner, and refers to the words of ancient prophets, while he is immediately foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, looks forward to the day of judgment, and expresses himself in a language which, although, by the established practice of the prophets, it is applicable in a figurative sense to the fall of a city and the dissolution of a state, yet in its true, literal, precise meaning, applies to that day in which all cities and states are equally interested. While the fulfilment then of the direct sense of this prophecy is a standing proof of the divine knowledge of Jesus, it is also a pledge, that the secondary sense shall in due time be accomplished; and thus the exhortation with which our Lord concludes this prophecy, and which is manifestly expressed in such a manner, as shows that it was intended for his disciples in every age, is enforced upon us as well as upon those that heard him. The Christians were delivered from the destruction in which their countrymen were involved, by following the directions of Jesus; and upon our watchfulness and obedience to him depend our comfort, our improvement, and the salvation of our souls, in the great day of the Lord. Josephus, Hurd, and Commentaries on the 24th chapter of Matthew, in the works of Tillotson, Jortin, Newton, Newcome, &c. |