Every word concerning Jerusalem has stood immovable. The mightiest earthly powers united to save the doomed temple; yet the flames mocked their puny efforts. Again, the mightiest earthly powers, stimulated by the most determined hatred, strove to rebuild that temple, when the fire of the Lord beat them back. The honour and the veracity and the omnipotence of God are pledged to sustain and accomplish His word. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but no word of God can possibly fail. Here is joy-fulness of joy-to the man whose confidence is in God. But here is sadness and despair to all the enemies of God. God has written it in His Book, He has charged His ministers to speak it in the hearing of all men, "He that believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." This is a decree as firm as that which called for the destruction of Jerusalem. History will yet record the fulfilment concerning each human being. It will be read either amid the glories of the upper world, or amid the agonies of the pit; for God is true. It is the glory of the Divine government that God accomplishes His purposes through the agency of men who are carrying out their own chosen plans. The Roman emperor-ambitious of conquest-chose to subjugate Judea. Titus arranged all the plans of the siege, the assaults, and the victories. The robbers. and the leaders of the factions chose for themselves their methods of plunder and tyranny. For who so free as the men whom God has given up, and who work iniquity with greediness? It is a principle of the Divine government to execute judgments in the way of man's chosen wickedness. The apostle Paul tells us that the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their prophets, and have persecuted us, "have filled up their sins, and wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." But in what manner? The facts are instructive. Briefly recall them. It was at the passover that Christ was crucified. It was at the passover that Titus built a wall around the city, and shut them in to death. They preferred a robber who was seditious and a murderer to Christ. It was by robbers and the seditious and murderers that their lives were made bitter unto death. They rejected the true Messiah; and false Christs led them on to destruction. They sold and bought Christ, and carried Him away bound; so they were sold for money, and carried away by force. They put Christ, the King of the Jews, to death, lest the Romans should come and take their place and their nation. The Romans did come and take their place and their nation. They crucified Christ before the walls,-they were crucified there in great numbers. Every actor in this strangely diversified drama acted freely. The Jews, the robbers, the murderers, the seditious, and the Romans; all did as they chose and planned. Yet were they the Divine instrumentalities by which the predicted destruction was accomplished. "Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee: the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain;" "but for the elect's sake these days shall be shortened." That sin was the cause of the destruction of Jeru salem is certain, for thus saith the Lord: "And the people shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword, and they shall have none to bury them, . . . for I will pour their wickedness upon them." Again: "For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? or who shall go aside to ask how thou doest? Thou hast forsaken me, thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out My hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary with repenting.. . . Thy substance and thy treasures will I give to the spoil without price, and that for all thy sins, even in all thy borders. And I will make thee to pass with thine enemies into a land which thou knowest not for a fire is kindled in Mine anger, which shall burn upon you."1 Scenes such as the sun never saw before, nor the curtains of midnight ever shrouded,-scenes such as the earth shall never witness again, were enacted in Jerusalem. ... These are the evidences of the ruinous power of sin. Beginning at the time when David took the city, and following its history through Absalom's rebellion, its taking by Nebuchadnezzar, its destruction by Titus, its conquest by the Saracens, the Franks, and the Turks, to the present hour, we find there is no other spot on the globe against which the wrath of Heaven has so terribly and continuously burned, no spot so struck and scathed by the lightnings of Heaven. The old world by one flood was drowned. Sodom and Gomorrah filled up 1 Jer. xv. 5, 6, 13, 14. the cup of their iniquity, and one rain of fire and brimstone swallowed them up. But Jerusalem for succeeding centuries has been the great standing monument of Divine judgments. Its inhabitants enjoyed long intervals of unprecedented mercies, thus proving that their sin was subdued by neither love nor vengeance. What must be the character of sin when the benevolent God is forced thus to deal with men; when the loving Saviour with tears pronounced the doom of the sacred city: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Oh, it was sin that forced such an heart of tenderness to speak the doom of Jerusalem. X. Subsequent History of the Jews. "I will persecute them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be removed to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment, and an hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations whither I have driven them: because they have not hearkened to My words, saith the Lord." JER. xxix. 18, 19. "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days." HOSEA iii. 4, 5. "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery,... that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is My covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins." ROM. xi. 25-27. HE Scriptures speak not only of the degradation, sufferings, and dispersion, but also of the final restoration of the Jews. The singularly exact fulfilment of the prediction of the Saviour relative to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans, as well as the possession of their land by the Gentiles for eighteen hundred years, are fully chronicled in history. But what has become of the people? If it be asked where are the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and other ancient nations, the reply |