Now of the prophecies of our Saviour there are various kinds recorded in the Gospel.

First, There are some of our Lord's predictions which embraced but a very small portion of the future in their terms, and whose completion therefore was often immediate and almost momentary. Jesus said unto Peter, "Verily I say unto thee, That this night before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." The cock crew, "and Peter remembered the words of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out and wept bitterly."* On another occasion, he said unto them, "Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you bearing a pitcher of water, follow him into the house where he entereth in....And he shall shew you a large upper-room furnished, there make ready.-And they went and found as he had said unto them; and they made ready the passover." I could produce a thousand examples of a similar kind, so varied in their nature, so minute in their reference, and so intimately interwoven with the surrounding narrative, that an unprejudiced mind would feel it impossible to reject their testimony to Jesus. But still they are not exactly adapted to our present purpose, nor sufficiently convincing *Matt. xxvi. 34, & 75. + Luke xxii. 10, 12, 13.

to tell

upon the perverseness of modern infidelity. Both in these and many other similar cases the prediction and its fulfilment rest upon the same testimony. The fulfilment, therefore, cannot properly or conclusively be made use of to establish the credibility of that testimony. If a man bear witness of himself, his witness is nothing in a doubtful case. It is where the words of a prophecy, and the fact of its completion are related by different individuals, or drawn from different and independent sources, that they can be brought forward with the greatest triumph as proofs. We must pass on, therefore, to some other examples of alleged prescience in Jesus.

*

In the second place, then, there is a class of the predictions of our Lord, which, instead of being confined to the compass of a few hours or years, imply his knowledge of things to come, even in the very end of the world and time. He speaketh thus. "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall

*Matt. xxvi. 31.

the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then shall he say also unto them on his left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Herein have we revealed to us the hidden things of the Almighty; the glory, the circumstances, the sentence, and the name of the judge who shall pronounce their final doom upon the evil and the good. But who can know these things of God, save God himself, and those to whom he hath vouchsafed to reveal them. Such then also ought to be our conclusion here. There is no sign of falsehood or of ignorance-no trace of enthusiasm; no wild workings of the imagination; no gaudy metaphors-no lofty language -no artificial rhetoric to shew how he laboured in the conception and utterance of his thoughts. Jesus speaks as one familiar with the scene. The subject seems within his comprehension and his grasp. There is no darkness or indistinctness in his picture. Truth and light and reality are impressed upon every part; and we feel in the composure, and the simplicity, and the minuteness and the reasonableness of the delineation, a convincing evidence, that he was speaking according to his experience, and knew both what he did say and whereof he did affirm. But strong as this

internal evidence is, it is yet a sort of evidence to which the sceptic will refuse to bend his stubbornness or waywardness. He will perhaps tell us, that, however probable, this prophecy is as yet unfulfilled, and may never be fulfilled at all. Or he will transmute it into a mere figurative representation of the existence of a future state of retribution, which he will say might have been learnt from philosophy alone. We must bring the infidel, therefore, to some class of prophecies where there is no room for conjecture, and where the certainty of the prediction having preceded the event, and the certainty of the event having fulfilled the prediction, leave him no other conclusion than this-that the utterer of the prediction foresaw and spake of the event, ere it did come to pass.

Now of this third species of prophecies, we shall find two instances most particularly preeminent, in the declarations which our Lord is recorded to have made; first, with regard to the utter and eternal destruction of the city of the Jews; and, secondly, with regard to the establishment and perpetuity of the Christian Church. These prophecies comprehend the whole period of time and events from the moment in which they are said to have been uttered, down to the final and universal triumph of the kingdom of Christ. Part of both has already been fulfilled. Part of both is

fulfilling under our own eyes, and part still remains incomplete; and thus altogether they present a chain of proof which must bind down the infidel to meet the real question and leave him no subterfuge or escape, by urging the possibility of deception. To these two prophecies, then, it is that I would now turn your attention, and though both have been so frequently illustrated, I must confess that I never turn to them again without gathering new confidence in my faith, and new hope in my calling.

1. To know the future, as it relates to this world, is, in general, only to know more of the wickedness and wretchedness of this world than other men do, and thus to add one more to the many complicated and unavoidable causes of human grief. It was so with the man of God when standing before Hazael, and foreboding the evil which he would bring upon Israel, he fixed his countenance upon him stedfastly until he wept. It was so with Jesus when, standing before Jerusalem, he foresaw that her house would be left unto her desolate." When he was come near," says the Evangelist St. Luke,* "he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from

* Luke xix 41.