taken literally for our Lord's personal coming at the last day; and that the figure is rather to be sought in those expressions which, in their literal meaning, might seem to announce his immediate arrival. And this St. Peter seems to suggest, when he tells us, in his second epistle, that the terms of soon and late are to be very differently understood when applied to the great operations of Provi. dence, and to the ordinary occurrences of human life. “ The Lord,” says he, “is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Soon and late are words whereby a comparison is rather intended of the mutual proportion of different intervals of time, than the magnitude of any one by itself defined. And the same thing may be said to be coming either soon or late, according as the distance of it is compared with a longer or a shorter period of duration. Thus, although the day of judgment was removed undoubtedly by an interval of many ages from the age of the apostles, yet it might in their days be said to be at hand, if its distance from them was but a small part of its original distance from the creation of the world,—that is, if its distance then was but a small part of the whole period of the world's existence, which is the standard, in refer-ence to which, so long as the world shall last, all other portions of time may be by us most properly denominated long or short. There is again another use of the words soon and late, whereby any one portion of time, taken singly, is understood to be compared, not with any other, but with the number of events that are to come to pass in it in natural consequence and succession. If the events are few in proportion to the time, the succession must be slow, and the time may be called long. If they are many, the succession must be quick, and the time may be called short in respect to the number of events, whatever be the absolute extent of it. It seems to be in this sense that

expressions denoting speediness of event are applied by the sacred writers to our Lord's coming. In the day of Messiah the Prince, in the interval between our Lord's ascension and his coming again to judgment, the world was to be gradually prepared and ripened for its end. The apostles were to carry the tidings of salvation to the extremities of the earth. They were to be brought before kings and rulers, and to water the new-planted churches with their blood. Vengeance was to be executed on the unbelieving Jews, by the destruction of their city, and the dispersion of their nation. The Pagan idolatry was to be extirpated,—the Man of Sin to be revealed. Jerusalem is yet to be trodden down; the remnant of Israel is to be brought back,--the elect of God to be gathered from the four winds of heaven. And when the apostles speak of that event as at hand, which is to close this great scheme of Providence,-a scheme in its parts so exten. sive and so various,—they mean to intimate how busily the great work is going on, and with what confidence, from what they saw accomplished in their own days, the first Christians might expect in due time the promised consummation.

That they are to be thus understood may be collected from our Lord's own parable of the fig-tree, and the application which he teaches us to make of it. After a minute prediction of the distresses of the Jewish war, and the destruction of Jerusalem, and a very general mention of his second coming, as a thing to follow in its appointed season, he adds, “Now learn a parable of the fig-tree: When its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” That it is near ;--So we read in our English Bibles; and expositors render the word it, by the ruin foretold, or the desolation spoken of. But what was the ruin foretold, or the desolation spoken of? The ruin of

the Jewish nation-the desolation of Jerusalem. What were all these things, which, when they should see, they might know it to be near? All the particulars of our Saviour's detail;-that is to say, the destruction of Jerusalem, with all the circumstances of confusion and distress with which it was to be accompanied. This exposition, therefore, makes, as I conceive, the desolation of Jerusalem the prognostic of itself,-the sign and the thing signified the same. The true rendering of the original I take to be, "So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that He is near at the doors.". He, that is, the Son of Man, spoken of in the verses immediately preceding, as coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The approach of summer, says our Lord, is not more surely indicated by the first appearances of spring, than the final destruction of the wicked by the beginnings of vengeance on this impenitent people. The opening of the vernal blossom is the first step in a natural process, which necessarily terminates in the ripening of the summer fruits; and the rejection of the Jews, and the adoption of the believing Gentiles, is the first step in the exccution of a settled plan of Providence, which inevitably terminates in the general judgment. The chain of physical causes, in the one case, is not more uninterrupted, or more certainly productive of the ultimate effect, than the chain of moral causes in the other. "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." All these things, in this sentence, must unquestionably denote the same things which are denoted by the same words just before. Just before, the same words denoted those particular circumstances of the Jewish war which were included in our Lord's prediction. All those signs which answer to the fig-tree's budding leaves, the apostles and their contemporaries, at least some of that generation, were to see. But as the thing portended is not included among the

signs, it was not at all implied in this declaration that any of them were to live to see the harvest, the coming of our Lord in glory.

I persuade myself that I have shown that our Lord's coming, whenever it is mentioned by the apostles in their epistles as a motive to a holy life, is always to be taken literally for his personal coming at the last day.

It may put the matter still farther out of doubt, to observe, that the passage where, of all others, in this part of Scripture, a figurative interpretation of the phrase of "our Lord's coming" would be the most necessary, if the figure did not lie in the expressions that seem to intimate its near approach, happens to be one in which our Lord's coming cannot but be literally taken. The passage to which I allude is in the fourth chapter of St. Paul's first epistle to the Thessalonians, from the 13th verse to the end. The apostle, to comfort the Thessalonian brethren concerning their deceased friends, reminds them of the resurrection; and tells them, that those who were already dead would as surely have their part in a happy immortality, as the Christians that should be living at the time of our Lord's coming. Upon this occasion, his expressions, taken literally, would imply that he included himself, with many of those to whom these consolations were addressed, in the number of those who should remain alive at the last day. This turn of the expression naturally arose from the strong hold that the expectation of the thing in its due season had taken of the writer's imagination, and from his full persuasion of the truth of the doctrine he was asserting,-namely, that those who should die before our Lord's coming, and those who should then be alive, would find themselves quite upon an even footing. In the confident expectation of his own reward, his intermediate dissolution was a matter of so much indifference to him that he overlooks it. His expression, however, was so strong, that his meaning was

mistaken, or, as I rather think, misrepresented. There seems to have been a sect in the apostolic age,-in which sect, however, the apostles themselves were not, as some have absurdly maintained, included,—but there seems to have been a sect which looked for the resurrection in their own time. Some of these persons seem to have taken advantage of St Paul's expressions in this passage, to represent him as favouring their opinion. This occa. sioned the second epistle to the Thessalonians, in which the apostle peremptorily decides against that doctrine; maintaining that the Man of Sin is to be revealed, and a long consequence of events to run out, before the day of judgment can come; and he desires that no expression of his may be understood of its speedy arrival; which proves, if the thing needed farther proof than I have already given of it, that the coming mentioned in his former epistle is the coming to judgment, and that whatever he had said of the day of coming as at hand, was to be understood only of the certainty of that coming.

The most difficult part of my subject yet remains, to consider the passages in the Gospel wherein the coming of our Lord is mentioned.