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LECTURE IX.

Daniel, ix. 26.

"And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined."

THE object intended in prophecy was to awaken in mankind the expectation of a Redeemer ; and to prepare them for a period of peace and righteousness, suitable to the moral attributes of the Creator, and the welfare and happiness of his creatures. At the time of the appearance of the Divine Personage, in whom these expectations were realised; the object for which the inspired order of prophets was instituted was generally acknowledged. The chosen witnesses of the miraculous operation, which proved that the predicted period had arrived, in discharging the object of their mission proposed the subject,

in this view to their hearers. They accordingly declared, “that all the prophets from Samuel, and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days."*

The angel who was deputed to give the prophet Daniel an insight into futurity, in directing his attention to "those days," describes them as arrayed in all the characters of innocence and righteousness, in which they were regarded in the prophetical vision. On the qualities of sinless repose, by which they were to be distinguished, he particularly dwells, in his opening of the subject predicted; declaring emphatically, that it was the divine intention " to make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness." While he intimates, that the time, for which this consummation was deferred, would be marked by several reverses, in the destiny of the Jews, and their city and temple; he steadily keeps in view, the Divine Personage, by whose mediation and ministry the promised

consummation would be effected.

To this object, the prophecy again reverts in the text: as the end of the divine purpose, which would be gradually developed. After having connected, as we observed on a previous occasion, the first and second of the three periods into which the "seventy weeks" were distributed;

* Acts, iii. 24.

+ Dan. ix. 24.

it again introduces the subject, with a similar purpose. As the prophet, in the antecedent allusion, took occasion to define the time of the Messiah's advent; he returns to it, in the present, to describe the character of his ministry.

I. But however the attention of Daniel may appear to be absorbed by this paramount object, it seems not to have altogether engrossed his attention. The advantage of the people for whose instruction he wrote, and to whose interests he immediately addressed himself, demanded his consideration; and they had the stronger claim claim upon his attention, in consequence of the remoteness of the event which was the proper object of the revelation. In the fate of the holy city and temple, he was naturally interested on their permanence, the religion and polity of which he reveals the duration, depended for their existence. With a subject thus entwined with his national sympathies, he interweaves the prediction, which he divides, as we formerly observed, according to the distribution of the period of seventy septenaries, by which it was measured, into seven, and sixty-two, and one week of years. In the first of which, he declares, Jerusalem and its fortifications would be completed; in the second, the city and temple would be polluted, and the land overrun by a people who had at the time no national existence, but "were to come;" and in the third, they

would be laid waste and ruined, and consigned to eternal desolation.

1. On regarding thus comprehensively the scope and object of the prophecy, no doubt can be long entertained, that the Romans are assigned a prominent place in it; and that of them the predictions of the text must be in a great measure understood. From an injudicious attempt to limit the part, assigned them by the prophet, to the final desolation of the temple and city; the great difficulties have arisen, by which it has been embarrassed: its interpreters having been misled, by the mistaken though well meant endeavour, to extend the part assigned in it to the Messiah beyond its proper limits. In the halo with which he was arrayed, the objects that surrounded him acquired that borrowed light, which has been mistaken, on a superficial view, for their native lustre. Nor can these difficulties be effectually removed; until the provinces allotted to the different parties, described as engaged in it, are accurately defined and apportioned.

When indeed, the influence exercised by the Romans, in the establishment and diffusion of the religion of the Messiah, is considered; it is difficult to evade the conclusion, that it must have operated under the direction of an overruling providence. It seems not easy to resolve, into an accidental or fortunate concurrence of

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events, the effects which they were the means of producing, in the great object of which revelation had given intimation. On the nativity of "him, who was born king of the Jews," we are assured, on the faith of history, that through their interposition, the Jews had no longer a king; the last prince of the Idumæan line, to whom the throne had descended, having been reduced, under their authority, to the rank of an ethnarch. When the predicted heir to the kingdom of David was anointed to his ministry, the national council, from whose opposition the success of it was alone likely to be impeded, was by their interference limited in its jurisdiction. And when the same divine person, publicly assumed his office, as the Mediator of a new covenant; that council was by the same authority compelled to abdicate its seat at Jerusalem, where alone its decisions were attended with legal effect. Through their intervention, the old and waning dispensation, which had been established by Moses, was perfected and finally abolished; as, in compassing the death of Christ, they were the means of his offering that sacrifice, in which, the types of the law were filled up, when its shadowy ordinances vanished. And by their hands, the ceremonial, which, when that offering was made, remained but in form, was buried in

*Matt. ii. 2.