of the world itself may be at the same time couched under it.

In verse the twenty eighth, he says, "Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." Eagles and vultures were said to follow the march of armies, to prey upon the bodies of the slain. Our Lord, in these figurative words, compares to a dead carcass the great body of the jewish nation remaining in unbelief, and of whom he had said that "they should die in their sins." (John viii. 24.) They had rejected their Messias himself, and obliged his apostles to turn from them to the gentiles. They were cut off for ever from the hope of Israel by the destruction of their temple, and the utter abolition of all their distinguishing signs as the people of God; shut up under the heavy wrath and lasting indignation of heaven, in a state of spiritual as well as political death, and become the destined prey of the roman eagles.

He says again, (v. 34.) "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." Or as the same conversation is again reported, (Matt. xvi. 27.) "The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his holy angels, and then shall be reward every man according to bis works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."-If the former part of this passage al. ludes to the final retribution at the last day, yet certainly the first sense in which it is to be understood is, his coming in his temporal judgments to reward the wicked and unbelieving jews according to their works. For he says, that some of the persons then present should live to see that day of judgment and retribution, which they undoubtedly might do, because it came to pass within forty years afterwards.

In Mark ix. i. the words are" till they have seen the kingdom of God come with pow er." The same gospel dispensation which

sees;

our Lord in Matthew xvi. calls "the kingdom of the Son of man," he here calls " the kingdom of God."—It is the administration of the kingdom of God the Father, committed to God the Son, according to that passage of the psalmist, which our Saviour, in proof of his own divinity, once quoted against the phari"Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool," (Psalm cx. 1.) adding, "If David then called him Lord, bow is he his Son?" He says therefore, that some of his auditors should live to see the full establishment of the gospel, which was then in its infancy, and apparently insignificant in its pretensions; or, according to his own comparison, like a grain of mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven was preached first by John the baptist, as being then near at hand. Afterwards by the seventy disciples, and at length published authoritatively, (and as being virtually opened), by Jesus himself; though it was not actually so until by his death the great atonement was made, and by his resurrection, and entering in through the veil, “be was declared to be the Son of God

G

with power,"—even "to save them to the uttermost that should come unto God through bim." So long as the jewish temple and the mosaic ritual and sacrifices remained, although they were now no longer of any avail in a religious sense, the forbearance of God held open the door of repentance to the jews; and the christians were reminded of their Lord's prophecies, and taught to lock forwards to the accomplishment of them, as the full and public establishment of their religion, or the kingdom of God come with power.

The coming of Christ, as he truly declared, was "not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil." The ceremonial law, and the temple service, and the sacrifices of beasts, were as the scaffolding set up for the erecting of the more perfect edifice of the church of Christ; and the necessary removal of it, “in the fulness of time," implied not any destruction, but rather a perfecting of the great work of God. It still remains in the sacred volume a wonderful and beautiful evidence of

the skill and uniformity of design, distinguishable in every part of that vast temple, which is of capacity sufficient to receive all nations, and "whose builder and maker is God." Or if we suppose our Lord to mean the moral law, we find him upon all occasions adding the strongest confirmation to it, and by rational expositions, which appeal to the conscience and reason of men, vindicating it from the corrupt abuses and false interpretations of the scribes.

The miserable destruction of the jews, by the heavy vengeance of their insulted King at the great day of his coming, to which he alludes in Matthew xxiv. was therefore no contradiction, but an act in perfect consistency with his character as the Prince of Peace, and with his declaration in favor of the law and the prophets. If he "came not to send peace on earth, but a sword," and "miserably to destroy those wicked men, and burn up their city;" the whole blame lies upon their own perverseness, which obliged him in that manner to put a final period to the mosaic dis