LECTURES. LECTURE I. MATTHEW Xxiv. 3-22. "As he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? "And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. "And ye shall hear of wars, and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sor rows. "Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. "When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains. Let him which is on the house-top not come down to take any thing out of his house. Neither let him which is in the field, return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath-day: for then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." BUT a few days before our Lord closed his earthly career, he denounced against the chosen people, Divine vengeance. He declared, that upon that generation should be visited, as it were, all the righteous blood shed upon the earth-that their house should be left unto them desolate the beautiful, sacred, time-honoured temple becoming a ruin, one stone in it not left upon another. The Israelite, in his feeling national to a fault, had little belief that the city or temple of his forefathers could be overthrown except with the overthrow of the world. It was part of his creed, that great calamities would precede the manifestation of the Messiah. Hence, he inquired in one breath, "When shall these things be? What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" In answer to this inquiry about his second coming, the Saviour uttered the famous prophecy contained in the 24th and 25th chapters of St. Matthew. By way of rectifying the mistake of his disciples, their notion that the end of the world would be coincident with the end of the temple, he began the speech by mentioning * Rosenmuller on Matt. xxiv. 7. manifold occurrences to take place before his reappearance at the last day-false pretensions to the Messiahship, commotions, sore trials to the Church, the announcement of the Gospel to all nations, the destruction of Jerusalem, danger of delusion, protracted disaster to the Holy Land. Imperfect and dark as the spiritual understanding of the disciples thus far was-full as they were of the notion, that the Christ, sooner or later, must manifest himself as a king of this world-little dreaming that there could be any considerable length of time to intervene between the first and second comings of the Master-they ran great risk of being constantly imposed upon. Should any adventurer in some distant part of the country, give out he was the Christ, and answer at all to the description with which their minds were prepossessed as belonging to this predicted personage—the more ignorant of the Christian Jews (not well understanding that the Messiah, at his second coming, would shine forth with Heavenly glory) might easily be deluded into the belief, that this ad |