they "could not find any to buy them." (Deut. xxviii. 68.) Multitudes were taken to be exposed to the wild beasts in the Roman theatres. Eleven hundred thousand were slaughtered or perished from hunger in Jerusalem alone. The rest were driven forth to wander over the whole earth-"to find no ease, and for the sole of their foot no rest"-to cry in the morning, "Would God it were evening, and at even to say, Would God it were morning"-without sceptre, without temple, without solemn feasts. The sacred vessels of the temple were borne away to grace the triumph of the heathen, and placed side by side with the "abomination that maketh desolate;" but no hand from heaven interposed to rescue the ark again out of the hands of the Philistines.* The land of Judea, once the "land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil-olive and honey; a land wherein they should eat bread without scarceness, and should not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones were iron, and out of whose hills they might dig brass❞—was blighted with the curse which has fallen upon her sons, and became, as it has continued to be, an utter desolation. The whole economy which had subsisted for fifteen hundred years, but which had served its purpose, now that Shiloh had come, was destroyed, never to be needed, and never to be erected again; and eighteen hundred years of judgment upon Israel is still proclaiming to the world "the wrath of the Lamb." * Some may be curious to know what became of those vessels which seem to have been those made by Judas Maccabeus. Representations of them were exhibited in the triumphal arch of Titus, and are still to be seen at Rome, but the vessels themselves were deposited at Rome in the temple of Peace. In the year of our Lord 455 they were carried over into Carthage, in Africa, by Genseric, king of the Vandals, who sacked Rome on that occasion. From whence, in the reign of Justinian, they were recovered by Belisarius, who conquered the Vandals, A. D. 534, and graced his triumph also with them at Constantinople. They were afterwards, according to Gibbon, deposited in the Christian Church of Jerusalem.-Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xxxvi. xli.. And now, brethren, we cannot close our sketch of this portion of Israel's wondrous history, incomplete as we feel it to be, without pressing upon you a word of exhortation. Oh! are you not terrified to reject Christ after all this? There must be something most peculiar about Jesus of Nazareth, otherwise whence these tremendous consequences of embruing our hands in his blood? Did not Israel slay messengers and stone prophets in multitudes? yet were not all these crimes together followed by judgment in any way so tremendous as that which immediately came upon them for crucifying Jesus of Nazareth. Each, indeed, of these iniquities added its portion of unutterable woe to the vial of wrath which has been poured out upon them, but it was the blood of Him whom they crucified which at once filled that vial to the brim, and brought down the indignation which was suspended till it was shed. Since the hour when they imprecated that blood to be upon them, vengeance has unceasingly pursued them. They have been scattered and peeled for eighteen hundred years, three hundred longer than they had existed as a nation at all. Being left without grace, they have been the blindest, the most debased of all people-given up to the most humiliating superstitions, ready, as they showed amid all the calamities of the siege, to follow every vain impostor, although they slew the true Messiah; and have been treated as the veriest offscourings of the earth. How shall we account for this? What other conclusion can we draw, but that the blood shed upon Calvary was more precious than all that had been shed from the beginning of the world, and that the Person of him who was there slain had something awfully mysterious about it, which distinguished it from that of all holy apostles and prophets. Oh! the Lord gave testimony at the building of the second temple, that the first temple, although possessing the glorious presence of Jehovah himself, manifested in the cloud, should yet be far exceeded in glory by the second, which wanted this token of the Divine presence, because to it "the Desire of all nations should come." I ask you, how could this be if Christ were not himself Jehovah, and if the higher glory did not consist in the greater clearness of the manifestation of Jehovah, and in its being now made in the flesh? Could the presence of a mere creature, think you, have given more honour to the second temple than the presence of the Creator himself gave to the first? But if any thing additional were needed to prove this to be the case-it is afforded, we think, by the awful national judgment inflicted upon Jerusalem, for eighteen hundred years. Surely this tremendous visitation in comparison of all others, proves the "him whom they pierced," of the evangelist to be the glorious "Me" of the prophet, (Zech. xii. 10,) and that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Son of God. And shall this High and Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity, come down from the heights of his glory-clothe himself with humanity—take upon him your sins, of the infinite hatefulness of which he was fully conscious when the Father laid iniquity_upon Him-clothe himself with the infinite curse due to that sin, and die-shall he do all this and then come and offer you a rich, full, free salvation, the purchase of His own precious blood; and will you dare to neglect or despise his grace? You are not dealing with men, you are not dealing with ministers, shall we say you are dealing with Jesus of Nazareth, yea with Him who became Jesus of Nazareth? It is He with whom you must transact, with whom you are indissolubly connected for eternity, for if ye inherit not the love, you must inherit the wrath of the Lamb. And are you still determined to go down to everlasting woe, unawakened, unforgiven, unsaved-without God, without hope, and to be cast into the fiery lake with this tremendous millstone of judgment hung about your neck: that ye have rejected and "trodden under foot the Son of God?" Oh listen once more before you perish for eternity. Oh comply with the call of that Saviour whose wings are still stretched out, to gather poor sinners beneath them, as a hen gathereth her brood. Close with the offers of Jesus pressed upon you this day. "Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. "With Him there is plenteous redemption"-salvation sufficient to suit the case of any of you. Though your iniquities be like the grains of sand upon the shore for multitude, Christ's blood is like the sweeping waters of the ocean, which can cover the whole. Though your sins be mighty mountains for magnitude, the depths of the sea of Christ's blood can swallow them up, so that they never should be seen any more. Though ten thousand times ten thousand congregations such as this, were standing shivering in spiritual nakedness, the golden robes of Emmanuel's everlasting righteousness are sufficient to clothe them all. Yea, not merely is there sufficiency in the blood of Christ to cleanse the vilest sinner from guilt, and in His righteousness to procure his full acceptance with God, but in His glorious person also are stored up all the treasures of grace. He hath not merely wrought all righteousness for his people, but is filled for them also with the immeasurable fulness of the Holy Ghost, that through him all grace might flow forth, so as to fill the poorest, the weakest, the youngest amongst them. His riches are unsearchable. The fulness with which every grace is in Him is altogether inexhaustible. He is like the honey comb, every cell of which is filled with pure and delicious honey: yea so full of sweet treasure, that though all the companies of the redeemed-ay, though millions of worlds could come and draw honey from a single cell, there would be enough in that one cell, enough of that single grace of which they might be in quest to supply the wants of them all. Arise, then, poor sinners, Shiloh has come. Let this day" the gathering of the people be to Him." Come and ye shall be as Israel in the days of his youth. "Your tents shall be goodly as those of Jacob, and your tabernacles as those of Israel, as the valleys shall they be spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters." Arise, and, like Israel in the days of her glorious restoration yet to come, "the Lord will love you freely-his anger shall be turned away from you. Come and he will be to you as he is to Israel, the soft, silent, and refreshing dew; you shall grow as the lily, and cast forth your roots as Lebanon; your branches shall spread, and your beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and your smell as Lebanon; and they that dwell under your shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine, and the scent thereof shall be as the vine of Lebanon." Amen. CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS, FROM THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM BY POMPEY TILL ITS DESTRUCTION BY TITUS. Pompey takes Jerusalem, The temple of Jerusalem plundered by Crassus, the triumvir Antipater, the father of Herod the Great, made procurator of Ju- B. C. 63 54 47 44 43 40 The Parthians take Jerusalem, and settle Antigonus, the son of that Aristobulus who contended with Hyrcanus for the crown, upon the throne-Antigonus crops the ears of Hyrcanus, his uncle, by which Hyrcanus is rendered incapable of holding the office of high priest, Herod, being made king of Judea by the Roman senate, besieges Jerusalem, and takes it after half a year's siege. Antigonus sent prisoner to Rome and beheaded. Herod settled as king, 37 Herod makes Aristobulus, brother of his wife Mariamne, and grandson of Hyrcanus, high priest, and afterwards murders him, Herod begins to build Cesarea, which he finishes in twelve years, 22 Herod, after two years' preparation of materials, begins the renewal of the temple, The common era employed by Christians, and first used by Archelaus succeeds him, Common Christian era begins, 17 54321 A. D. |