of an eagle on their standards,—if the carcass, round which the eagles were to be gathered, be the Jewish nation, which was morally and judicially dead, and whose destruction was pronounced in the decrees of heaven,-if this were certain, it might then seem necessary to understand the coming of the Son of Man, in the comparison of the lightning, of his coming figura. tively to destroy Jerusalem. But this interpretation of the eagles and the carcass I take to be a very uncertain, though a specious conjecture.

As the sacred historians have recorded the several occurrences of our Saviour's life without a scrupulous attention to the exact order of time in which they happened, so they seem to have registered his sayings with wonderful fidelity, but not always in the order in which they came from him. Hence it has come to pass, that the heads of a continued discourse have, perhaps, in some instances, come down to us in the form of unconnected apothegms. Hence, also, we sometimes find the same discourse differently represented, in some minute circumstances, by different evangelists; and maxims the same in purport somewhat differently expressed, or expressed in the same words, but set down in a different order;-circumstances in which the captious infidel finds occasion of perpetual cavil, and from which the believer derives a strong argument of the integrity and veracity of the writers on whose testimony his faith is founded. Now, wherever these varieties appear, the rule should be to expound each writer's narrative by a careful comparison with the rest.

To apply this to the matter in question. These prophecies of our Lord, which St. Matthew and St. Mark relate as a continued discourse, stand in St. Luke's nar. rative in two different parts, as if they had been delivered upon different, though somewhat similar occasions. The first of these parts, in order of time, is made the

latter part of the whole discourse in St. Matthew's nars rative. The first occasion of its delivery was a question put by some of the pharisees concerning the time of the coming of the kingdom of God. Our Lord having given a very general answer to the pharisees, addresses a more particular discourse to his disciples, in which, after briefly mentioning, in highly figured language, the affliction of the season of the Jewish war, and after cautioning his disciples against the false rumours of his advent which should then be spread, he proceeds to describe the suddenness with which his real advent, the day of judgment, will at last surprise the thoughtless world. The particulars of this discourse we have in the 17th chapter of St. Luke's gospel. The other part of these prophecies St. Luke relates as delivered at another time, upon the occasion which St. Matthew and St. Mark mention. When the disciples, our Lord having mentioned the demolition of the temple, inquired of him, " When shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world ?” our Lord answers their question, as far as it was proper to answer it. He gives a minute detail of those circumstances of the war, which, to that generation, were to be the signs of the last advent;- not the thing itself, but the signs of it; for the beginning of the completion of a long train of prophecy is the natural sign and pledge of the completion of the whole. He foretels the total dispersion of the Jews. He mentions briefly his own coming, of which, he says, the things previously mentioned would be no less certain signs than the first appearances of spring are signs of the season of the harvest. He affirms that the day and hour of his coming is known to none but the Father; and he closes the whole of this discourse with general exhortations to constant watchfulness, founded on the consideration of that suddenness of his coming of which he had given such explicit warning in his former discourse. The detail of this last discourse, or rather of so. much of this discourse as was not a repetition of the former, we have in the 21st chapter of St. Luke's gospel.

St. Matthew and St. Mark, the one in the 24th and 25th, the other in the 13th chapter of his gospel, give these prophecies in one entire discourse, as they were delivered to the apostles upon the occasion which they mention; but they have neither distinguished the part that was new from what had been delivered before, nor have they preserved, as it should seem, so exactly as St. Luke, the original arrangement of the matter. In particular, St.

. Matthew has brought close together the comparison of the Son of Man's coming with a flash of lightning, and the image of the eagles gathered about the carcass. St. Mark mentions neither the one nor the other; whereas St. Luke mentions both, but sets them at the greatest distance one from the other. Both, as appears from St. Luke, belonged to the old part of the discourse; but the comparison of the lightning was introduced near the beginning of the discourse, the image of the eagles and the carcass at the very end of it. Indeed this image did not belong to the prediction, but was an answer to a particular question proposed by the disciples respecting some things our Lord had said in the latter part of this prophecy. Our Saviour had compared the suddenness of the coming of the Son of Man to the sudden eruption of the waters in Noah's flood, and to the sudden fall of the lightning that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. It is evident, from St. Matthew's relation, that the coming, intended in these similitudes, is that com. ing, of the time and hour of which none knows, said our Lord,“ not even the Son, but the Father.” But since the epoch of the destruction of Jerusalem was known to the Messiah by the prophetic spirit,--for he said that it should take place before the generation with which he was living on earth should be passed away, the coming, of which the time was not known to the Messiah by the prophetic spirit, could be no other than the last personal advent. This, therefore, is the coming of which our Lord speaks in the 17th chapter of St. Luke's gospel, and of which he describes the suddenness; and, in the end of his discourse, he foretels some extraordinary interpositions of a discriminating Providence, which shall preserve the righteous, in situations of the greatest danger, from certain public calamities which in the last ages of the world will fall upon wicked nations. “Of two men in one bed, one shall be taken and the other left. Two women grinding together, the one shall be taken and the other left. Two men shall be in the field, the one shall be taken and the other left. And they said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.” It is probable that the eagle and the carcass was a proverbial image among the people of the East, expressing things inseparably connected by natural affinities and sympathies.

“ Her young ones suck up blood,” says Job, speaking of the eagle, “and where the slain is, there is she.” The disciples ask, Where, in what countries are these calamities to happen, and these miraculous deliverances to be wrought? Our divine instructor held it unfit to give farther light upon the subject. He frames a reply, as was his custom when pressed with unseasonable questions, which, at the same time that it evades the particular inquiry, might more edify the disciples than the most explicit resolution of the question proposed. “ Wheresoever the carcass is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.” Wheresoever sinners shall dwell, there shall my vengeance overtake them, and there will I interpose to protect my faithful servants. Nothing, therefore, in the similitude of the lightning, or the image of the eagles gathered round the carcass, limits the phrase of “our Lord's coming,” in the 27th verse of this 24th chapter of St. Matthew, to the figurative sense of his coming to destroy Jerusalem.

His coming is announced again in the 30th verse, and in subsequent parts of these same prophecies; where it is of great importance to rescue the phrase from the refinements of modern expositors, and to clear some considerable difficulties, which, it must be confessed, attend the literal interpretation. And to this purpose I shall devote a separate discourse.