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together," ver. 27, 28. Let us now enquire briefly how these predictions were accomplished.

This prophecy of the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem was uttered at a time when Judæa was in complete subjection to the Romans. A governor resided in Jerusalem with an armed force, and the country, no longer at enmity with the masters of the world, was regarded as a province of the Roman empire. There was, indeed, prevalent among the Jews, a general indignation at the Roman yoke, a tendency in the minds of the people to sedition and tumult, and a fear in the council lest these sentiments should at some time be expressed with such violence as to provoke the Romans to take away their place and nation. It was, in fact, the turbulent spirit, and the repeated insurrections of the Jewish people, which did incense the Romans; and a person well acquainted with the disaffection which generally prevailed, and the character of those who felt it, might foresee that the public tranquillity would not continue long, and that this sullen, stiff-necked people were preparing for themselves, by their murmurings and violence, more severe chastisements than they had endured at the time they were reduced into the form of a Roman province. But though a sagacious and enlightened mind, which rose above vulgar prejudices and looked forward to remote consequences, might foresee such an event, yet the manner of the chastisement-the signs which were to announce its approach-the method in which it was to be administered—and the length of time during which it was to continue -all these were out of the reach of human foresight. There is a particularity in this prophecy, by which it is clearly distinguished from the conjectures of political sagacity. It embraces a number of contingencies, depending upon the caprice of the people, upon the wisdom of military commanders, and upon the fury of the soldiers. The author of a new religion must have been careless of his reputation, and of the success of his scheme, if he ventured to foretel such a number of improbable events, without knowing certainly that they were to come to pass; and it required not the wisdom of man, but the spirit of prophecy, to foresee that all of them would concur before the generation that was then alive upon the earth passed away; for to that short pe

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riod, Christ had limited the approaching calamities. Yet the Lord Jesus uttered this prophecy forty years before the event took place. The prophecy was not laid up after it was uttered, like the pretended oracles of the heathens, in some repository, where it might be corrected by the event; but having been brought to the remembrance of those who heard it spoken, by the Spirit which Jesus sent into the hearts of his apostles, after his ascension, it was committed to writing, and published to the world, previously to the time of the fulfilment. We know that the apostle John lived to see the destruction of Jerusalem, and it is not certain whether he wrote his gospel before or after that event: but John has omitted the prophecy altogether. Our knowledge of it is derived from the other three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, whose Gospels were carried by the Christian converts into all parts of the world, while the city and temple were yet standing, and they were early translated into different languages, which were quoted in the succeeding age, and were universally held by the first Christians as books of authority-the standards of faith. In these books, thus authenticated to us, we find various intimations of the destruction of Jerusalem, by parables and short hints, interwoven in the thread of the history, while all the three contain the same long and particular prophecy, with a trifling variety of expression, but without the least discordance or even alteration of the sense. The main part of this prophecy has been most strikingly fulfilled, and there are parts which are fulfilling even in our day.

The accomplishment of the prophecy we learn not from Christian writers only, but from an author whose witness is unexceptionable, because it is not the witness of a friend ;-we have it from a man who seems to have been preserved by Providence in order to transmit to posterity a circumstantial account of this memorable siege. I refer to Josephus, a Jew, who wrote a history of his country, and has also left a relation of that war in which Jerusalem was destroyed. In the beginning of the war he was a military officer, commanding a detachment in Galilee ; but, the place where he was stationed being besieged by Vespasian, he made his escape with forty other persons, after a gallant resistance, and, with his companions, hid himself in a cave. Vespasian, having discovered their lurking place, offered them

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their lives, on condition of their surrendering to the Romans. Josephus would have accepted the offer, but his companions refused to give themselves up. With a view to prolong the time, he prevailed upon his companions to cast lots who should die first-the lots were cast two by two; and he who is Sovereign of the universe, and disposeth the lot, so ordered it that, of the forty, thirty-nine were killed by the hands of one another, and one only was left with Josephus. This man yielded to his entreaties, and, instead of drawing lots which of them should kill the other, they went together and offered themselves to Vespasian. The miserable fate of their companions procured them a kind reception; and, from that time, Josephus remained in the Roman camp, an eye-witness of every thing that happened during the siege; and to him the world is indebted for a faithful and circumstantial relation of those extraordinary events, in which we find an exact accomplishment of our Lord's prediction.

It would be incompatible with the limits of this Lecture to quote from the pages of Josephus the narrative which he has furnished us of the sanguinary contest which desolated the country before the Roman army began to lay siege to the city, or even of the events that accompanied the siege. Many of our ablest writers, as Bishop Newton on the Prophecies, Drs. Lardner, Jortin, Newcome, and others have done this, and, by setting the narration of the historian over against our Lord's prophecy, they have demonstrated the exact accomplishment of the latter. To their writings, some of which are now in every one's hands, I refer you; or rather let me recommend it to you to go to the pages of the Jewish historian yourselves, and read them as a commentary on the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, if you have not already done it; keeping in mind, as you proceed, that Josephus was not a Christian, but a Jew.* I must content myself with offering a few general remarks on the prophecy and its accomplishment.

The great Temple which Solomon had built was destroyed, you know, at the time of the Babylonish captivity. Cyrus permitted the two tribes, who returned to Judæa, to rebuild the house of their God; and this second temple was repaired and

* See Josephus's Works, translated by Whiston, 8vo. edition, vol. iv.

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adorned by Herod the Great, who, having received the crown of Judæa from the Romans, thought that the most effectual way of overcoming the prejudices and conciliating the Jewish people was by beautifying and enlarging, after the plan of Solomon's temple, the building which had been hastily erected in the reigns of Cyrus and Darius. It was still accounted the second Temple; but was so much improved by Herod's munificence that both Josephus and the Roman historians celebrate the extent, the beauty, and the splendour of the building. And Josephus mentions, in particular, marble stones of a stupendous size in the foundation, and in different parts of the building. To these, it is probable, the disciples pointed, when lamenting the destruction of such a fabric, and which occasioned Jesus to say; "Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." And, by the providence of God, this was literally fulfilled. Josephus informs us that the Roman general Titus, who, in the absence of his father Vespasian, commanded the besieging army, was most solicitous to preserve so splendid a monument of Roman conquest; and therefore sent a message to the Jews, who had shut themselves up in the Temple, that he was determined to save it from destruction. But they could not bear that the house of their God, the pride and glory of their nation, should fall into the hands of the heathen; and, to prevent this evil, they set fire to the porticoes. A soldier, observing the flames, threw a burning brand in at the window; and others, incensed at the obstinate resistance of the Jews, regardless of the commands or threatenings of their general, who personally exerted himself to extinguish the flames, continued to set fire to different parts of it; and, at length, even to the doors of the holy place. "And thus," says Josephus, "the temple was burnt to the ground, against the will of Titus." When it was in this way rendered useless, he ordered the foundations to be dug up; and Rufus, who commanded the army after Titus had taken his departure, executed this order, by tearing them up with a ploughshare; thus verifying the prophecy of Micah, "Zion shall be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest," Micah iii. 12.

But though I have led you at once to the grand catastrophe, the demolition of the Temple, there are a variety of other circumstances connected with it, and referred to in the prophecy, which it would be great injustice to the subject to pass over unnoticed; particularly the great and general calamities which were to overtake the nation of the Jews during the interval, to some of which we shall now briefly advert.

A few years after our Lord's ascension to heaven the imperial sceptre was swayed by Caligula, who in the year 37 had succeeded Tiberius Cæsar. He reigned little more than four years, but, during that short period, his madness led him to butcher many of the Jews. He ordered his statue to be erected in the Temple of Jerusalem; and the Jews, who had too high a veneration for the house of the true God to admit of any thing like divine honours being there paid to a mortal, resolved to suffer every distress rather than give countenance to the sacrilege of the emperor. Such was the consternation which the rumour of this event, and an impending war with the Romans, spread through Judæa, that the people neglected to till their lands, and in despair waited the approach of the enemy. But the death of Caligula, which happened A. D. 41, removed their fears, and delayed for some time the destruction which he meditated. Yet, from this period to the destruction of the city and temple, the whole territory of Judæa was one continued scene of national strife, and contention, and misery to the wretched inhabitants. There were incessant wars and contests between the Jews and the heathen inhabitants of many cities in the province of Syria -disputes about the bounds of their jurisdiction amongst the rulers, amongst whom the land of Palestine was dividedand wars arising frm the quick succession of emperors, and the violent competitions for the imperial diadem. It was not the sword only that filled with calamity this disastrous interval. The human race, according to the words of our Lord's prophecy, suffered under those judgments which proceed immediately from heaven. Josephus has mentioned famine and pestilence, earthquakes in every place where the Jews resided; and one in Judæa, attended with circumstances so dreadful and so unusual that it was manifest, he says, "the whole course of nature was disturbed for the destruction of the human race."

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