Tell us when shall these things be, and what shall be the

signs of thy coming and of the end of the world?

I PROCEED in my inquiry into the general importance of the phrase of “the coming of the Son of Man" in the Scriptures of the New Testament.

I have shown, that in the epistles, wherever our Lord's coming is mentioned, as an expectation that should operate through hope to patience and perseverance, or through fear to vigilance and caution, it is to be under. stood literally of his coming in person to the general judgment. I have yet to consider the usual import of the same phrase in the gospels. I shall consider the passages wherein a figure hath been supposed, omitting those where the sense is universally confessed to be literal.

When our Lord, after his resurrection, was pleased to intimate to St. Peter the death by which it was ordained that he should glorify God, St. Peter had the weak curiosity to inquire what might be St. John's destiny.

Lord, what shall this man do ?” “Jesus saith unto him, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me.” The disciples understood this answer as a prediction that St. John was not to die; which seems to prove, what is much to our purpose, that in the enlightened period which immediately followed our Lord's ascension, the expression of his coming was taken in its literal meaning. This interpretation of the reply to St. Peter was set aside by the event. In extreme old age, the disciple whom Jesus loved was taken for ever to the bosom of his Lord. But the Christians of that time being fixed in a habit of interpreting the reply to St. Peter as a prediction concerning the term of St. John's life, began to affix a figurative meaning to the expression of

our Lord's coming,” and persuaded themselves that the prediction was verified by St. John's having survived the destruction of Jerusalem; and this gave a beginning to the practice, which has since prevailed, of seeking figurative senses of this phrase wherever it occurs. But the plain fact is, that St. John himself saw nothing of prediction in our Saviour's words. He seems to have apprehended nothing in them but an answer of significant though mild rebuke to an inquisitive demand.

If there be any passage in the New Testament in which the epoch of the destruction of Jerusalem is intended by the phrase of “our Lord's coming," we might not unreasonably look for this figure in some parts of those prophetical discourses, in which he replied to the question proposed to him in the words of the text, and particularly in the 27th verse of this 24th chapter of St. Matthew's gospel, where our Saviour, in the middle of that part of his discourse in which he describes the events of the Jewish war, says, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” And he adds, in the 28th verse, “For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the cagles be gathered together.” The disciples, when they put the question, “ Tell us when shall these things be, and what shall be the signs of thy coming and of the end of the world ?” imagined, no doubt, that the coming of our Lord was to be the epoch of the demolition with which he had threatened the temple. They fuad not yet raised their expectations to any thing above

a temporal kingdom. They imagined, perhaps, that our Lord would come by conquest, or by some display of his extraordinary powers, which should be equivalent to conquest, to seat himself upon David's throne; and that the destruction of the Jewish temple would be either the last step in the acquisition of his royal power, or perhaps the first exertion of it. The veil was yet upon their understandings; and the season not being come for taking it entirely away, it would have been nothing strange if our Lord had framed his reply in terms accommodated to their prejudices, and had spoken of the ruin of Jeru. salem as they conceived of it, -as an event that was to be the consequence of his coming to be his own im. mediate act, in the course of those conquests by which they might think he was to gain his kingdom, or the beginning of the vengeance which, when established in it, he might be expected to execute on his vanquished enemies. These undoubtedly were the notions of the disciples, when they put the question concerning the time of the destruction of the temple and the signs of our Lord's coming; and it would have been nothing strange if our Lord had delivered his answer in expressions studiously accommodated to these prejudices. For as the end of prophecy is not to give curious men a knowledge of futurity, but to be in its completion an evidence of God's all-ruling providence, who, if he governed not the world, could not possibly foretel the events of distant ages ;--for this reason, the spirit which was in the prophets hath generally used a language, artfully contrived to be obscure and ambiguous, in proportion as the events intended might be distant,-gradually to clear up as the events should approach, and acquire from the events, when brought to pass, the most entire perspicuity: that thus men might remain in that ignorance of futurity, which so suits with the whole of our present condition, that it seems essential to the welfare of the world; and

yet be overwhelmed at last with evident demonstrations of the power of God. It might have been expected that our Lord, in delivering a prediction, should assume the accustomed style of prophecy, which derives much of its useful ambiguity from this circumstance,- from an artful accommodation to popular mistakes, so far as they concern not the interest of religion ;-and much of this language indeed we find in our Lord's discourse. But with respect to his own coming, it seems to be one great object of his discourse, to advertise the Christian world that it is quite a distinct event from the demolition of the Jewish temple. This information is indeed conveyed in oblique insinuations, of which it might not be intended that the full meaning should appear at the time when they were uttered. But when Christians had once seen Jerusalem, with its temple and all its towers destroyed, the nation of the Jews dispersed, and our Lord, in a literal meaning, not yet come; it is strange that they did not then discern, that if there be any thing explicit and clear in the whole of this prophetical discourse, it is this particular prediction, that during the distresses of the Jewish war the expectation of our Lord's immediate coming would be the reigning delusion of the times. The discourse is opened with this caution, “Take heed that no man deceive you: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many." And the same caution is repeated in various parts of the prophecy, till he comes at last to speak (as I shall hereafter show) of his real coming as a thing to take place after the destined period should be run out of the deso. lation of the holy city. “If any man shail say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe it not. If they shall say unto you, Behold he is in the desert, so not forth; Behold he is in the secret chambers, believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.

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For," as it is added in St. Matthew, "wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." Give no credit, says our Lord, to any reports that may be spread that the Messiah is come,-that he is in this place, or in that: my coming will be attended with circumstances which will make it public at once to all the world; and there will be no need that one man should carry the tidings to another. This sudden and universal notoriety that there will be of our Saviour's last glorious advent is signified by the image of the lightning, which, in the same instant, flashes upon the eyes of spectators in remote and opposite stations. And this is all that this comparison seems intended or indeed fitted to express. It hath been imagined that it denotes the particular route of the Roman armies, which entered Judea on the eastern side, and extended their conquests westward. But had this been intended, the image should rather have been taken from something which hath its natural and necessary course in that direction. The lightning may break out indifferently in any quarter of the sky; and east and west seem to be mentioned only as extremes and opposites. And, accordingly, in the parallel passage of St. Luke's gospel, we read neither of east nor west, but indefinitely of opposite parts of the heavens: "For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under the heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven, so shall also the Son of Man be in his day." The expression his day is remarkable. The original might be more exactly rendered his own day; intimating, as I conceive, that the day, i. e. the time of the Son of Man, is to be exclusively his own,-quite another from the day of those deceivers whom he had mentioned, and, therefore, quite another from the day of the Jewish war, in which those deceivers were to arise.

Nevertheless, if it were certain that the eagles, in the next verse, denote the Roman armies, bearing the figure