the most merciful severity pronounced the sentence of desolation upon Jerusalem. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Likewise on another occasion, recorded by St. Luke, when he was approaching to Jerusalem, "He beheld the city," saith the evangelist, "and wept over it, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes." So deeply was our Saviour affected, and so tenderly did he lament over the calamities which he foresaw would come upon his nation! When our Lord uttered the pathetic lamentation, recorded in St. Matthew, he was in the temple, speaking to a mixt audience of his disciples and the multitude; and as he was departing out of the temple, as we read at the 1st verse of the 24th chapter, "His disciples came to him, for to show him the buildings of the temple :" inti

mating no doubt, what a calamity they conceived it would be should so magnificent a structure be destroyed. Jesus said unto them,

Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." Our Lord in his prophecies frequently alludes to phrases and expressions used by the ancient prophets. The phrase of

one stone not being left upon another' is of this description. It is a proverbial expression, and was generally used to denote an utter destruction; so that the prophecy would have been amply fulfilled, if the city and temple had been ruined, though every single stone had not been overthrown: but it happened in this case that the words were almost literally fulfilled, and that scarcely one stone was left upon another. For when the Romans had taken Jerusalem, we read in Josephus, that" Cæsar gave orders, that they should now demolish the whole city and temple, except three towers, and a part of the western wall, and these were spared; but for all the rest of the wall, it was laid so completely even with the ground, by those who dug it up to the foundation, that

there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited." Maimonides, a Jewish rabbin, declares, "that the very foundations of the temple were digged up, according to the Roman custom :" in allusion to their practice of searching for treasure concealed in the earth. His words are these: “On that ninth day of the month Ab, fatal for vengeance, Turnus Rufus, of the children of Edom, ploughed up the temple, and the places round about it, that the saying might be fulfilled, Zion shall be ploughed as a field.' We learn from Josephus, that this Turnus, or rather Terentius Rufus, was left general of the army by Titus the Roman emperor, with commission, as the Jews suppose, to destroy the city and the temple. Eusebius, the Christian historian, also affirms, that the temple was ploughed up by the Romans, and that he saw it lying in ruins. So literally were our Saviour's words accomplished, in the ruin both of the city and of the temple; and well might Eleazer exclaim, as Josephus testifies, that "God had delivered his most holy city to be burnt, and to be subverted by their enemies;

and wish that they all had died before they saw that holy city demolished, and the sacred temple so impiously dug up from its foundations. Thus plainly did our Saviour foretel the absolute ruin and destruction of the city and of the temple.

It appears from the third verse, that the disciples were curious to know more of these events. They therefore came to him privately, and renewed the discourse, as he sat on the Mount of Olives; a situation from which the whole of the city, and particularly of the temple, were clearly seen. Tell us," say they, "when shall these

things be, and what shall be the sign of thy coming?" In this inquiry the disciples propose two questions. First, respecting the time when Jerusalem should be destroyed: "When shall these things be?" and secondly, respecting the signs that should accompany its destruction:

And what shall be the sign of thy coming?" or as it is in St. Mark, "What shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?" The latter part of the question our Saviour answers first, treating of the signs of his coming, and of the destruction of Jerusalem from the

4th to the 31st verse inclusive; and from thence, passing on to the other part of the question, he declares the time when these events should take place. These two parts of our Saviour's answer will furnish us with the method to be pursued in our next discourse. From what hath already been advanced, I shall conclude with a few remarks. The first reflection which naturally arises, is the surprising manner in which the predictions of our Saviour have been fulfilled; and the convincing evidence it furnishes of the truth of our religion. How the contemplation of this subject may affect some minds, habituated to scepticism, it is difficult to conjecture; but surely the natural tendency of such an astonishing agreement, between the prophecy and its fulfilment, is to produce a conviction, neither to be shaken by the cavils of infidelity, nor by the suggestions of a naturally perverse and unbelieving heart: for if the prophecies have been fulfilled, of which no man who is acquainted with history can doubt, the scriptures cannot have proceeded from man, but must have been the word of God; and if the scrip

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