interpretation of our Lord's prophecies in
Matthew, Mark, and Luke: we may have the deepest respect for those
learned and pious divines who from time to time have tried to part the
prophecies relating to the fall of Jerusalem from those relating to the
end of the world and the day of Judgment. Yet, in the face of such a
passage as the text, especially when we cannot agree with those who would
make this "generation" mean this "race" or "nation," we may--we have a
right to--decline to separate the two sets of passages. We have a right
to say,--He who spake as man never spake, and therefore knew the force of
words; He who knew what was in man--and therefore what effect His words
would produce on His hearers--did deliver a discourse--indeed, many
discourses--which asserted, as far as plain words could be understood by
plain men, that the Kingdom of God was at hand; and that the coming of
the Son of Man would take place before that generation passed away.

And that all His disciples, and St Paul as much as any, put that meaning
upon His words, is a matter of fact and of history, to be seen plainly in
Holy Scripture.

But, while the text compels us to believe that the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Romans was a coming of the Son of Man--a manifestation
of the Kingdom of God--a day of Judgment, in the strictest and most awful
sense; yet we are not compelled to limit the meaning of the text to the
destruction of Jerusalem.

No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. Prophets,
apostles--how much more our Lord Himself--do not merely indulge in
presages; they lay down laws--laws moral, spiritual, eternal--which have
been fulfilling themselves from the beginning; which are fulfilling
themselves now; which will go on fulfilling themselves to the end of
time.

So said our Lord Jesus of His own prophecies concerning the destruction
of Jerusalem. It was but one example--a most awful one--of the laws of
His kingdom. Not in Judaea only, but wherever the carcase was, there
would the eagles be gathered together. In the moral, as in the physical
word, there were beasts of prey--the scavengers of God--ready to devour
out of His kingdom nations, institutions, opinions, which had become
dead, and decayed, and ready to infect the air. Many a time since the
Roman eagles flocked to Jerusalem has that prophecy been fulfilled; and
many a time will it be fulfilled once more, and yet once more.

And what else, if we look at t