grandeur is a large block or foundation stone in the ruins, which has been worn smooth by the kisses of Rabbis and Jews who visit Jerusalem, and fulfil the beautiful words in the Psalm "Thy saints take pleasure in her stones: her very dust is dear to them." No Englishman loves his home, no Scotchman loves his country, as a Jew loves Palestine. It is his home and country; he is a discrowned king, a weary footed wanderer, yet having a heritage before him, and a destiny in prophecy, in comparison of which the grandest estates are worthless; and having a lineage and an ancestry, beside which that of our proudest nobles is but of yesterday.

The disciples then asked Jesus, "Tell us, when shall these things be?" that is, the downfall of Jerusalem, the dislocation of all the stones of its temple, and the termination of that grand, but guilty dynasty, which ended seventy years after the birth of our blessed Lord. This is the first question. The second is, "What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of"-what is cotemporaneous with it-"the end," not "of the world," but of the Christian dispensation.

Our Lord proceeds to answer these two questions; but in answering the first He incidentally starts from the local and the national, and depicts the universal and closing scenes; that is, whilst speaking of the downfall of Jerusalem, He refers also by an association of ideas to the downfall of the present dispensation; because, what the Jewish dispensation was to the Christian, that the Christian dispensation is to the Millennial kingdom and glory. There will be a crash at the close of this dispensation, vaster, more terrific and startling, than that which took place at the close of that ancient dispensation which ended nearly 1800 years ago.

For many

Jesus said, "Take heed that no man deceive you. shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.' This did occur prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. False prophets and pretenders came. One said he was the Holy

Spirit. Another said he was the true Christ, and tried to seduce and deceive many by labouring to persuade the Jews that their kingdom would not fall, that some great deliverer would appear, and make it a temporal, perpetual, and magnificent dynasty. Jesus says also, 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 did actually occur. Josephus, the Jewish historian, who in all probability had never read this prophecy, gives a narrative of the events that preceded and followed the downfall of Jerusalem; and any one who will read what Dr. Keith, Bishop Newton, and Dean Goode have written upon the prophecy and its fulfilment, will see how the one dovetails with the other. "These,” Jesus says, “are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you;"-all the apostles, with the exception of John, died violent deaths-" and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake." "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many "-who professed the Gospel-" shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end,”—that is, to the end of his life-" the same shall be saved."

Then it is said, "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world." This phrase is used to denote the Roman empire. Hence, we read in Luke ii. 1, "That there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." That expression was applied primarily to the Roman empire, since that empire comprised the whole existing civilization of the world, and might therefore very properly be used to denote all the world. "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come."

They should see, He tells them, what would prepare Christians in Jerusalem to flee; "the abomination of desolation, spoken of by

Daniel the prophet." Some think this was the Roman eagle, or the imperial standard of Rome, which, being planted in the midst of Palestine, became thereby the fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel, that the abomination of desolation, or that which the Jew detested, would be set up in the midst of the Temple. But the Roman eagle was upon the coins of the realm, and had been so far planted on every acre of Palestine, long before this; and besides, to allege that this should be a sign to the Christian Jews to escape from the coming catastrophe, is to give a sign which really would be no sign at all. Alford thinks it means that the Zealots, a sect among the Jews, should intrude into the sacred temple, and add the last drop to the iniquity of that people, and precipitate, by the desecration of the holiest part of the temple, the catastrophe that was then impending at their doors. The first two gospels have an inner reference to the Jew; the last two gospels have an outer reference to the Gentile. The abomination of desolation to the Jew would be something interfering with the sacredness of his temple, but the eagles of Rome environing the capital would be a far more intelligible sign to the Gentiles, who were in the midst of Jerusalem at that time, than to the Jews.

After Jesus answered the first question, relating partly to the fall of Jerusalem, but touching also upon the close of this dispensation, He proceeds to answer the second question. "What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" He says, that instead of his advent being a thing unseen, it shall flash like the lightning that bursts from the east, and covers the whole horizon with its splendour, till every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him.

Evidently Christ will come upon a world unprepared for his advent; for He shall come with the suddenness, with the startling splendour of the lightning, and "gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

He illustrates this by a parable: "Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; when his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh." He had just blasted the fig-tree on the road, more as a symbol than otherwise. The fig-tree was the symbol of Judea, and when He blasted it, He said, "Let no more fruit grow on thee," till the consummation of the Gentile dispensation. When that fig-tree which He blasted, by saying no more fruit should grow upon it till the close of this dispensation, shall begin to put forth a little green leaf here and there, it will be the sign of summer. What summer? That beautiful summer that shall be irradiated with a millennial sun, when Jew and Gentile shall come to the brightness of his rising. This is the cold winter of the world. But it is a delightful thought that the winter gives signs of closingthat the first buds of spring begin now to show themselves, that on every dry branch and stem of Judah's withered fig-tree, buds at this moment are beginning to appear.

Jesus also describes what people shall be doing at his coming; "As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." They shall be "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage "all proper, but denoting that they shall be thinking only of these things, instead of weeping as though they wept not, and rejoicing as though they rejoiced not. And then there shall flash upon them the lightning gleam that ushers in the advent of Him who consumes the wicked from his presence, and gathers the elect into his own bosom. "Two shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left;"-that is, two shall be turning the millstone, or employed in their domestic cares, one shall be taken, and the other left. But He adds, "That day and hour knoweth [or it may be translated, "maketh known"] no man; no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."

We can only gather the probabilities from the signs of the times;