dwells especially upon the unity and universality of modern history, as contrasted with the division of ancient history into a set of nations which had scarcely any common sympathies. The question is, where to find the boundary between these two periods. About these, students have made many guesses; most of them have been plausible and suggestive of truths; some very confusing; none, I think, satisfactory. One of the most popular, that which supposes modern history to begin when the barbarous tribes settled themselves in Europe, would be quite fatal to M. Guizot's doctrine. For that settlement, though it was a most important and indispensable event to modern civilization, was the temporary breaking up of a unity which had existed before. It was like the re-appearance of that separation of tribes and races, which he supposes to have been the especial characteristic of the former world.

Now, may we expect any light upon this subject in the Bible? I do not think it would fulfil its pretensions if we might not. It professes to set forth the ways of God to nations and to mankind. We might be well content that it should tell us very little about physical laws; we might be content that it should be silent about the courses of the planets and the law of gravitation. God may have other ways of making these secrets known to His creatures. But that which concerns the moral order of the world and the spiritual progress of human beings, falls directly within the province of the Bible. No one could be satisfied with it if it was dumb respecting these. And, accordingly, all who suppose it is dumb here, however much importance they may attach to what they call its religious character, however much they may suppose their highest

On the other

interests to depend upon a belief in its oracles, are obliged to treat it as a very disjointed fragmentary volume. They afford the best excuse for those who say, that it is not a whole book as we have thought it, but a collection of the sayings and opinions of certain authors, in different ages, often not very consistent with each other. hand, there has been the strongest conviction in the minds of ordinary readers as well as of students, that the book does tell us how the ages past and the ages to come are concerned in the unveiling of God's mysteries, what part one country and another has played in His great drama, to what point all the lines of His providence are converging. The immense interest which has been taken in Prophecy, an interest not destroyed or even weakened by the numerous disappointments which men's theories about it have had to encounter, is a proof how deep and widely spread this conviction is. Divines endeavour in vain to recall simple and earnest readers from the study of the Prophecies, by urging that they have not leisure for such a pursuit, and that they ought to busy themselves with what is more practical. If their consciences tell them that there is some ground for the warning, they yet feel as if they could not heed it altogether. They are sure that they have an interest in the destinies of their race as well as in their own individual destiny. They cannot separate the one from the other ; they must believe that there is light somewhere about both. I dare not discourage such an assurance. If we hold it strongly, it may be a great instrument of raising us out of our selfishness. I am only afraid lest we should lose it, as we certainly shall, if we contract the habit of regarding the Bible as a book of puzzles and conundrums, and of looking

restlessly for certain outward events, to happen at certain dates that we have fixed upon as those which Prophets and Apostles have set down. The cure for such follies, which are very serious indeed, lies not in the neglect of Prophecy, but in more earnest meditation upon it; remembering that Prophecy is not a set of loose predictions like the sayings of the fortune-teller, but an unfolding of Him Whose goings forth are from everlasting; Who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; Whose acts in one generation are determined by the same laws as His acts in another.

If I should ever speak to you of the Apocalypse of St. John, I shall have to enter much more at large on this subject. But so much I have said to introduce the remark, that the Bible treats the downfal of the Jewish polity as the winding-up of a great period in human history, and as the commencement of another great period. John the Baptist announces the presence of one 'Whose fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His floor and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.' The Evangelists say, that by these words He denoted that Jesus of Nazareth, who afterwards went down into the water of Jordan, and as He came out of it, was declared to be the Son of God, and on Whom the Spirit descended in a bodily shape.

We are wont to separate Jesus the Saviour, from Jesus the King and the Judge. They do not. They tell us from the first, that He came preaching a Kingdom of Heaven. They tell us of His doing acts of judgment as well as acts of deliverance. They report the tremendous words which He spoke to Pharisees and Scribes, as well as

THE COMING JUDGMENT.

139

the Gospel which He preached to publicans and sinners. And before the end of His Ministry, when His disciples were asking Him about the buildings of the Temple, He spoke plainly of a judgment which He the Son of Man should execute before that generation was over. And to make it clear that He meant us to understand Him strictly and literally, He added,—' Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' This discourse, which is carefully reported to us by St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, does not stand aloof from the rest of His discourses and parables, nor from the rest of His deeds. They all contain the same warning. They are gracious and merciful—far more gracious and merciful than we have ever supposed them to be--they are witnesses of a gracious and merciful Being; but they are witnesses, that those who did not like that Being, just because this was His character who sought for another being like themselvesthat is, for an ungracious and unmerciful being-would have their houses left to them desolate.

When, therefore, the Apostles went forth after our Lord's Ascension, to preach His Gospel and baptize in His name, their first duty was to announce that that Jesus whom the rulers of Jerusalem had crucified, was both Lord and Christ; their second was to preach remission of sins and the gift of the Spirit in His name; their third was, to foretel the coming of a great and terrible day of the Lord, and to say to all who heard, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.' It was the language which St. Peter used on the day of Pentecost; it was adopted with such variations as befitted the circumstances of the hearers by all who were entrusted with the Gospel message. It was, no

6

doubt, peculiarly applicable to the Jews. They had been made the stewards of God's gifts to the world. They had wasted their master's goods, and were to be no longer stewards. But we do not find the Apostles confining this language to the Jews. St. Paul speaking at Athens-speaking in words specially appropriate to a cultivated, philosophical, heathen city-declares that God has appointed a day in the which He will judge the world by that man whom He hath ordained;' and points to the Resurrection from the dead as determining who that man is. Why was this? Because the Apostles believed that the rejection of the Jewish people was the manifestation of the Son of Man; a witness to all nations who their King was—a call to all nations to cast away their idols and confess Him. The Gospel was to explain the meaning of the great crisis which was about to occur; to tell the Gentiles as well as the Jews what it would imply; to announce it as nothing less than the commencement of a new era in the world's historywhen the crucified man would claim a universal empire, and would contend with the Roman Cæsar, as well as with all other tyrants of the earth who should set up their claims against His.

This Scriptural view of the ordering of times and seasons entirely harmonizes with that conclusion at which M. Guizot has arrived by an observation of facts. Our Lord's birth nearly coincided with the establishment of the Roman empire, in the person of Augustus Cæsar. That empire aspired to crush the nations, and to establish a great world supremacy. The Jewish nation had been the witness against all such experiments in the old world. It had fallen under the Babylonian tyranny; but it had risen