might be presented perfect in Christ Jesus. And in what the Spirit said unto each and all of the churches which he that hath ears to hear was commanded to hear, the promise of everlasting blessedness, under a variety of the most glorious representations, was given, without exception, restriction, or reservation, to him that overcometh. The language of love, as well as of remonstrance and rebuke, was urged even on the lukewarm Laodiceans. And if any Christian fell, it was from his own resistance and quenching of the Spirit; from his choosing other lords than Jesus to have dominion over him; from his lukewarmness, deadness, and virtual denial of the faith; and from his own wilful rejection of freely-offered and dearly-purchased grace, sufficient, if sought, and cherished, and zealously used, to have enabled him to overcome and triumph in that warfare against spiritual wickedness to which Christ hath called his disciples; and in which, as the finisher of their faith, he is able to make the Christian more than conqueror.

But if such, as the Spirit described them and knew them to be, were the churches, and Christians then, what are the churches and what are Christians now? Or rather, we would ask of the reader, what is your own hope toward God, and what the work of your faith? If, while Christianity was in its prime, and when its divine truths had scarcely ceased to reach the ears of believers from the lips of apostles, on whose heads the Spirit had visibly descended, and cloven tongues, like as of fire, had sat; if, even at that time, one of the seven churches of Asia had already departed from its first love; if two others were partially polluted by the errors in doctrine, and evils in the practice, of some of their members; if another had only a few names that were worthy, and yet another none; and if they who formed the last and worst of these, thought themselves rich and increased with goods, and that they had need of nothing; and knew not that, being lukewarm, they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked; have you an ear to hear or a heart to understand such knowledge? and do you, professing yourself a Christian, as they also did, see no cause or warning here to question and examine yourself, even as the same Spirit would search and try you, of your works, and charity, and service, and faith, and patience?

What is your labor of love, or wherein do you labor at all for his name's sake, by whose name you are called? What trials does your faith patiently endure? what temptations does it triumphantly overcome? Is Christ in you the hope of glory, and is your heart purified through that blessed hope? To a church we trust you belong; but whose is the kingdom within you? What principles ever actuate you which Christ and his apostles taught? Where, in your affections and life, are the fruits of the Spirit-love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance? Turn the precepts of the gospel into questions, and ask thus what the Spirit would say unto you, as he said unto the churches.

What the Spirit said unto primitive and apostolic churches, over which "the be-loved disciple" personally presided, may suffice to prove that none who have left their first love, if ever they have truly felt the love of Jesus-that none who are guilty of seducing others into sin and uncleanness-that none who have a name that they live, and are dead-and that none who are lukewarm, are worthy members of any Christian communion; and that while such they continue, no Christian communion can be profitable to them. But unto them is "space to repent" given. And to them the word and Spirit speak in entreaties, encouragements, exhortations, and warnings, that they may turn from their sins to the Saviour, and that they may live and not die. But were there one name in Sodom, or a few in Sardis, that are the Lord's,. he knows and names them every one; and precious in his sight is the death of his saints. Some, on the other hand, may be sunk into the depths of Satan, though in outward fellowship with a church, were such to be found, as pure as once was that of Thyatira. Whatever, therefore, the profession of your faith may be, seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness; that kingdom which is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, and that righteousness which is through faith in Christ, who gave himself for the church, that he might sanctify and cleanse it. And whatever dangers may then encompass you around, fear not-only believe; all things are possible to him that believeth.

It was by keeping the word of the Lord, and not denying his faith, by hearing what the Spirit said, that the church of Philadelphia held fast what they had, and.no

man took their crown, though situated directly between the church of Laodicea, which was lukewarm, and Sardis, which was dead. And dead as Sardis was, the Lord had a few names in it which had not defiled their garments-Christians, worthy of the name, who lived, as you yourself should ever live, in the faith of the Lord Jesus-dead unto sin, and alive unto righteousness; while all around them, though naming the name of Jesus, were dead in trespasses and sins. Try your faith by its fruits; judge yourself that you be not judged; examine yourself whether you be in the faith; prove your own self; and with the whole counsel of God, as revealed in the gospel, open to your view, let the rule of your self-scrutiny be what the Spirit said unto the churches.

Many prophecies remain which are not here noticed. But were any gainsayers to ask for more obvious facts and some demonstration of the truth of prophecy, which your own ears might hear and your eyes see, you have only to hear how they speak evil of the things that they understand not-how they speak great swelling words of vanity to allure others, promising them liberty while they themselves are the children of corruption; you have only to look on these scoffers, and mockers, and false teachers, who have come in the last times; who walk after their own lusts, who despise government, who are presumptuous and self-willed, and who foam out their own shame, to hear and to see the loud and living witnesses of the truth of God's holy and unerring word. (2 Pet. iii. 3; Jude xiii.) Such have been, and such are, the enemies of the Christian faith. Yet it calls them from darkness to light, and from death to life. Turn ye, turn ye: why, it asks of these boasters of reason, why will ye die?

If you have seen any wonderful things out of the law of the Lord, and have looked, though from afar off, on the judgments of God that have come upon the earth, lay not aside the thought of these things when you lay down this book. Treat them not as if they were an idle tale, or as if you yourself were not to be a witnessand more than a witness-of a far greater judgment, which shall be brought nigh unto you, and shall be your own.

If, in traversing some of the plainest paths of the field of prophecy, you have been led by a way which you knew not of before, let that path lead you to the well of living waters, which springeth up into everlasting life to every one that thirsts after it and drinks. Let the words of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be to you this wellspring of the Christian life. Let the word of God enlighten your eyes, and it will also rejoice your heart. Search the Scriptures, in them there are no lying divinations; they testify of Jesus, and in them you will find eternal life. Pray for the teaching and the aid of that Spirit by whose inspiration they were given. And above all Christian virtues, that may bear witness of your faith, put on charity, love to God and love to man, the warp and woof of the Christian's new vesture without a seam; even that charity, or love, by which faith worketh, which is the fruit of the Spirit, the end of the commandment, the fulfilling of the law, the bond of perfectness, and a better gift and a more excellent way than speaking with tongues, or interpreting, or prophesying, and without which you would be as nothing, though you understood all mystery and all knowledge. From the want of this the earth has been covered with ruins. Let it be yours, and however poor may be your earthly portion, it will be infinitely more profitable to you than all the kingdoms of the world, and all their glory. Prophecies shall fall; tongues shall cease; knowledge shall vanish away; the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up; but charity never faileth.

If you have kept the word of the Lord, and have not denied his name, hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. But if heretofore you have been lukewarm, and destitute of Christian faith, and zeal, and hope, and love, it would be vain to leave you with any mortal admonition; hear what the Spirit saith, and harden not your heart against the heavenly counsel, and the glorious encouragement given unto you by that Jesus of whom all the prophets bear witness, and unto whom all things are now committed by the Father. "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayst be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayst be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with

me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

CHAPTER XIV.

CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE FINAL DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY THE ROMANS AS FORETOLD BY OUR BLESSED REDEEMER A SHORT TIME BEFORE HIS DEATH.

THE Jews remain to this day not only the guardians of the Old Testament scriptures, but living witnesses of the truth of many prophecies, which, in the first ages of their history, unfolded their fate until the latest generations. Jewish and heathen historians fully describe the dreadful miseries which they suffered when all their cities were laid waste, when Jerusalem itself was destroyed in the seventieth year of the Christian era, and the remnant of their race, after an almost uninterrupted possession of Judea by their forefathers for fifteen hundred years, were driven from their country and scattered throughout the world. A brief detail of the unparalleled miseries which they then endured may serve to connect their former history with their subsequent alike unparalleled fate, and to show that the prophecies respecting the destruction of Jerusalem are as circumstantial and precise, and were as minutely fulfilled, as those in which their more recent and present history may be read.

The Israelites were chosen to be a peculiar people. The worship of the only living and true God was maintained among them alone for many ages, while idolatry and polytheism (or the worship of many gods) otherwise universally prevailed. But the Father of the universe is no respecter of persons. A divine law was given to the descendants of Abraham, and blessings and curses were set before them, to cleave to their race in every age, according as they would observe and obey the commandments of the Lord, or refuse to hearken unto his voice, and to do all his commandments and statutes. Their history, and their continued preservation as a people, is thus an express record and manifestation of the doings of Providence. To read of their calamities is to see the judgments of God; and to compare them with the prophecies is to witness the truth of his word. There were intermingled seasons of prosperity and triumph, or of oppression and misery, as they enjoyed or forfeited their promised blessings, throughout the long period that they dwelt in the land of Canaan. But their punishments were to rise progressively with their sins; and so awfully sinful were the inhabitants of Jerusalem after the time of their merciful visitation had passed, and when the dark unbroken era of their miseries began, that Josephus, their great historian, and the greatest of their generals in their wars with the Romans, has recorded his opinion that, had they delayed their coming, the city would have been swallowed up by an earthquake or overflowed by water, or, as it was worse than Sodom, would have been destroyed by fire from heaven.* The vial of wrath was not poured out till the measure of their iniquities was full.

Instruments are never wanting for the execution of the purposes of God; nor, when needful for the confirmation of his word, is there any want of full testimony that his declared purposes have been fulfillel. There is nothing similar in history to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, and to the miseries which its inhabitants inflicted and brought upon themselves by their savage barbarity and unyielding obstinacy; nor was there ever any other city or country of whose destruction, devastation, and misery, there is so clear and authenticated a detail. Josephus, himself a Jew and an eye-witness of the facts he relates, gives a circumstantial account of the whole war, which furnishes complete evidence, not only of the truth of what Moses and the prophets had foretold, but also of all that in clearer vision, and to the perturbation and astonishment of his disciples, Christ had explicitly revealed concerning its then approaching fate. Heathen writers also record many of the facts.

The prophecies from the Old Testament and from the New relative to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem are so numerous, that the insertion of them at length would occupy a greater space than can here be devoted to the consideration of the

*Josephus's History of the Wars of the Jews, book 5, chap. 13, ◊ 6.

subject. The reader may peruse them as they are to be found in the written word: Levit. xxvi. 14, &c.; Deut. xxviii. 15, &c.; Isa. xxix. 1, &c.; Ezek. vi. 7; Jer. xxvi. 18; Micah, iii. 12; Matt. xxi. 33, &c. ; xxii. 1-7; xxiv.; Mark, xiii.; Luke, xx. 919; xxi.; xxiii. 27-31. They require no other exposition of their meaning. Exclusive of literal predictions, frequent allusions are interspersed throughout the Gospels respecting the abolition of the Mosaic dispensation, and the utter snbversion of the Jewish state.

But

A nation of fierce countenance, of an unknown tongue, and swift as the eagle flieth, were to come from a distant land against the Jews-to despoil them of all their goods-to besiege them in all their gates-to bring down their high and fenced walls. They were to be left few in number-to be slain before their enemies; the pride of their power was to be broken; their cities to be laid waste, and themselves to be destroyed-to be brought to nought-to be plucked from off their own landto be sold into slavery, and to be so despised that none would buy them. Their high places were to be rendered desolate their bones to be scattered about their altars: Jerusalem was to be encompassed round about-to be besieged with a mount-to have forts raised against it-to be ploughed over like a field-to become heaps, and to come to an end. The sword, the famine, and the pestilence, were to destroy them. The Jews lived fearless of judgments like these, when they dwelt in peace, and would not listen to the voice of Jesus. They would have no king but Cæsar; and they trusted in the power of the Roman empire as the security of their state. He whom they rejected showed how God had rejected them, how they were filling up the measure of their fathers, and how all these judgments that had been de nounced of old, and others of which their fathers had not heard, were to be felt by many, and to be all witnessed by some who were living then. And the Man of sorrows, whose face was set as a flint against his own unequalled sufferings, and who shed not a tear on his own account, was moved to pity, and his heart was melted into tenderness, on contemplating the great crimes and the coming calamities of the wicked, impenitent, and devoted city: "when he beheld Jerusalem, he wept over it.” The expiration of thirty-six years from the death of Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem; the death, previous to that event, of at least two of the evangelists who record the prophecies concerning it; the manner in which the predictions and allusions respecting the fate of Jerusalem are interwoven throughout the gospel; the warning given to the disciples of Christ to escape from the impending calamities, and the annunciation of the signs whereby they would know of their approach; the dread that was cherished by some of the earliest converts to the Christian faith that the day of judgment was then a hand, and which had arisen from the prophecies concerning the destruction of Jerusalem being closely connected with those relative to the second coming of Christ and the end of the world (all of which things his disciples had asked him to reveal); the unanimous assent of antiquity to the prior publication of the gospel; and the continued truth of the prophecy still manifested in Jerusalem being yet trodden down of the Gentiles,--afford as full a proof as could now be thought of that the predictions were delivered previous to the event.

No coincidence can be closer in relation to the facts than that which subsists between the predictions of Jesus and the narrative of the Jewish historian. Yet, as the reader will doubtless perceive, this coincidence is not more clear than that which subsists between the testimony of modern unbelievers and those prophecies which refer to the past and present desolation of Judea: wars, rumors of wars, and commotions; nations rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places; though the greatest of human evils that mortals fear were to be but the "beginning of sorrows"-the heralds of heavier wees. Many false Christs were to appear, and to deceive many. The disciples of Jesus were to be persecuted, afflicted, imprisoned, hated of all nations, and brought before rulers and kings for his name's sake, and many of them were to be put to death. Iniquity was to abound, and the love of many was to wax cold; but the gospel of the kingdom was to be preached in all the world. The abomination of desolation was to be seen standing in the place where it ought not. Jerusalem was to be compassed about with armies, a trench was to be cast about it, and they were to be hemmed in on every side. And there were to be fearful sights and great signs from heaven. These were to be the signs that the end of Jerusalem was at hand. And there was to be great distress upon the land, and wrath upon the people; the tribulation was to

be such as had never been, and would never be. The Jews were to fall by the edge of the sword; a remnant was to be led captive into all nations; of the temple, and of Jerusalem itself, one stone was not to be left upon another; and it was to be trodden down of the Gentiles till the time of the Gentiles should be fulfilled.

The prodigies which preceded the war, as related by Josephus, are these:

A comet, which bore the resemblance of a sword, hung over the city of Jerusalem for the space of a whole year.

A short time before the revolt of the Jews, a most remarkable and extraordinary light was seen about the altar of the temple. It happened at the ninth hour of the night preceding the celebration of the feast of the passover, and continued about half an hour, giving a light equal to that of day. Ignorant persons considered this unusual and wonderful appearance as a happy omen; but those of superior judgment averred that it was a prediction of approaching war; and their opinion was fully confirmed by the event.

The eastern gate of the interior part of the temple was composed of solid brass, and was of such an immense weight that it was the labor of twenty men to make it fast every night. It was secured with iron bolts and bars, which were let down into a large threshold consisting of an entire stone. About the fifth hour of the night this gate opened without any human assistance; immediate notice of which being given to the officer on duty, he lost no time in endeavoring to restore it to its former situation; but it was with the utmost difficulty that he accomplished it. There were likewise some ignorant people who deemed this to be a second good omen, insinuating that Providence had thereby set open a gate of blessings to the people; but persons of superior discernment were of a contrary opinion, and concluded that the opening of the gate predicted the success of the enemy, and destruction of the city.

A short time after the celebration of the feast of the passover, before the setting of the sun, the appearance of chariots and armed men were seen in the air, in various parts of the country, passing round the city among the clouds.

While the priests were going to perform the duties of their function, according to custom, in the inner temple, on the feast of Pentecost, they at first heard an indistinct murmuring, which was succeeded by a voice, repeating, in the most plain and earnest manner, these words: “Let us be gone, let us depart hence."

But the most extraordinary circumstance of the whole was this. Some time before the commencement of the war, and while the city appeared to be in the most perfect peace, and abounded in plenty, there came to the feast of tabernacles a simple countryman, a son of one Ananias, who, without any previous intimation, exclaimed as follows: "A voice from the east; a voice from the west; a voice from the four quarters of the world; a voice to Jerusalem, and a voice to the temple; a voice to men and women newly married; and a voice to the nation at large.' In this manner did he continue his exclamations, in various places through all the streets of the city; at which some persons of eminence in the city were so offended, that they ordered him to be apprehended, and severely whipped. This was accordingly done, but he bore his sufferings not only without complaint, but without saying a word in his own defence; and no sooner was his punishment ended, than he proceeded in his exclamations as before. By this time the magistrates were suspicious (and indeed not without reason) that what he had said proceeded from the divine impulse of a superior power, that influenced his words. In consequence of this, they sent him to the governor of Judea, who directed that he should be whipped with the greatest severity. This order was so strictly obeyed, that his very bones were seen, notwithstanding which, he neither wept nor supplicated, but, in a voice of mourning, between each stroke, exclaimed, Wo, wo to Jerusalem!" From this very extraordinary behavior, the governor was induced to interrogate him with respect to his character, and the places of his birth and residence, and what could prompt him to act as he had done. He would not, however, make any answer to either of these questions; upon which the governor found himself under the necessity of dismissing him, as a man out of his senses. From this period to the commencement of the war, he was never known either to visit or speak to any of the citizens, nor was he heard to say any other words than the melancholy sentence, "Wo, wo to Jerusalem." Those who daily punished him, received no ill language from him; nor did those who fed him receive his thanks; but what he generally said to every one was, an