watchfulness that they might not be taken by surprise in the day of the second advent; and that when that day should come, they might be accounted worthy to escape the things which should come to pass, and to stand before their Lord and Master.

"know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, WHEN ye shall 66 see all these things, know that it is near, even at the "doors. Verily I say unto you, THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT "PASS until all these things be fulfilled, (fulfilling.) Heaven "and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. "But of that day, (viz. of his advent in glory,) knoweth no man, no not the angels in heaven, but my Father only."

2dly. There are several texts in the Old Testament, which appear to throw light on the question under discussion, wherein the word yeva, occurs in the version of the Seventy, in a sense precisely similar to that which it bears in Matth. xxiv. 34. Numb. xxxii. 13, "And he made them to wander in the "wilderness until all that generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord, was consumed,” έωςε ξανηλώθη πασα ἡ γενεα οι ποιούντες τα πονηρα εναντι Κυρίου. Deut. xi. 14, « Until all the generation, rasa yevɛa, of the men of war having died, were "consumed out of the host."

66

Now as in these passages the word does, without contradiction, bear the sense of a generation of co-existing men, which had passed away before the children of Israel arrived at the brook Zered, on the borders of the promised land; so in Matt. xxiv. 34, the analogy of the expression leads us to interpret it as assuredly signifying that the then existing generation of men was not to pass away UNTIL our Lord's prophecy was in course of fulfilment by the actual destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple.

On the other hand, if the meaning of yeva, which is pleaded for by these writers, be admitted, it makes our Lord's emphatic words, Verily, I say unto you, &c., to affirm simply a Scriptural truism-(which the disciples already held with more than Scriptural tenacity, as to times and seasons, See Acts i. 6,) viz., that the Jews, a people that are never to pass away, (Jer.

The inference to be drawn from the preceding inquiry into our Lord's prophecy, with regard to the immediate subject of investigation, must be obvious to the attentive reader. Since a series of

xxxi. 35—37,) shall not pass away, until all the things predicted by our Lord shall have been accomplished. Thus these words are divested of all peculiar force and meaning, and of all originality, and especially of all chronological force—and this in a discourse manifestly relating to the times and seasons.

Having already shown that your bears the signification of a begun accomplishment, I shall now observe, that in Matt. xxiv. 34, it is found in the Aorist Subjunctive yea, in connexion with us av. Now, Mr. Faber, on the authority of one of the έως αν. first Greek scholars of the age, was pleased, in a paper in the Jewish Expositor for March, 1823, to affirm that when Aorist Subjunctives are constructed with όταν, or έως αν, or αχρις όu, the laws of grammar inexorably require them to be rendered in the future past sense. According to this canon of syntax the phrase in Matt. xxiv. 34, ought to be rendered with Mr. Faber's sense of yeva, "this nation shall not pass away until all these things shall have been fulfilled."

In opposition to this canon, (resting on such high authority,) I, in the following month of April, 1823, brought forward sundry examples from the Syriac version, (made while the Greek was yet a living language,) wherein the Aorist Subjunctive, with orav, is translated by the Syriac Participle Present, implying a running present sense. I subjoin an extract from my Paper in the Jewish Expositor for that month :—

1st."The first text which has occurred to me is Matt. vi. ν. 11, όταν ονειδισωσιν ὑμας και διωξωσι και είπωσι παν πονηρον ξημα. Are we then, according to the rule of grammar now adopted by Mr. Faber, to render this clause when they SHALL HAVE REVILED you, and SHALL HAVE PERSECUTED and SHALL HAVE SPOKEN all manner of evil of you.' Is the blessedness of the persecuted and reviled Christian only to begin when his persecutions are ended? Alas! how would this mar his comfort!- Is it not

events exactly corresponding with those awful signs in the celestial luminaries, which were to take place at the close of the times of the Gentiles, did actually commence at the fall of the French

manifest, on the contrary, that Christ pronounces his people blessed even while they SHALL BE REVILING you, and PERSECUTING you, and SPEAKING all manner of evil of you.' I have accordingly consulted the Syriac version, which I believe is allowed to be the most ancient of all on this passage, and it renders overdowo by being the plural Participle Present,

and

by

רדפין

war by 17 being also the Participle Present, and two the same Participle Present."

I next showed that in the phrase in Luke vi. 26, Ova u όταν καλως ύμας είπωσι πάντες οι ανθρωποι. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, the Syriac renders

יהוין אמרין

shall be speaking, &c., the Participle Present.

by

I shall now add, that the phrase in Matt. xxiv. 32, 'Orav nôn ó κλαδος ἄυτης γενηται απαλος, is rendered in Syriac as follows: "When now its branches are becoming tender," and the penultimate word being the identical Aorist Subjunctive of youa, now under discussion, is expressed by the Participle (Benoni)

דמחרא רסוכיה רכן Present Plural, the whole clause being

See

And

Schaaf. Lexic. Syriac. Lugdun. Batav. 1708, p. 550. so uniform is the rule, that in the next clause of the same verse," and putteth forth (is putting forth) leaves," the Greek Aorist Subjunctive expuŋ is again rendered by the Syriac Participle Present. Likewise in the corresponding clause of Luke xxi. 30, the Greek Aor. Subj. goßaλwon is rendered by y, being the Participle Present of the conjugation Aphel of the same Syriac verb.-See Schaaf. p. 465.

It appears, therefore, to be quite manifest, (if the authority of the Syriac version, made while the Greek was a living tongue, and almost in the Apostolic age, be thought conclusive,) that the phrase in Matt. xxiv. 34, may legitimately be rendered, This generation shall not pass away till all these things be FULFILLING; and as I have previously shown, that yeva cannot in this passage mean a nation, I presume that the above rendering

monarchy, and have continued to proceed with accelerated velocity to the present time; it follows that the times of the Gentiles, (i. e. the twelve hundred and sixty years,) ended at the fall of the French monarchy in 1792; which agrees with the conclusions we arrived at, in considering each of the foregoing propositions.*

There is also an inference to be drawn, from comparing our Lord's prophecy with the account given in the sixteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, contains the true solution of the difficulty. When my former editions were published, I was not aware that Dr. Cressener had explained the passage in the same manner, in his Demonstration of the Apocalypse, a century ago. He understands the meaning of the words, all these things,' shall be fulfilled, to be "the same with that which the Jesuit Ribera, and most others with him, do determine the sense of a like expression at the beginning and at the end of the Apocalypse, to be; in both which places it is said of all the things in that Book, that they were things that must shortly be done-that is, says Ribera, of these words, things that must shortly begin to be done, which he says is a common way of speech in the world, and according to the usage of Scripture." In this sense all "the things mentioned in the 24th of St. Matthew would be said to be fulfilled in that generation, though nothing but some remarkable beginning of them had been then to be fulfilled."-Cressener Demonstr. of Apocalypse, Lib. ii. c. 2.

* "The present period appears to be no other than the fulfilment' of the regular times of the Gentiles' declared by our Saviour; and the commencement of that last, disorderly, concluding time, which was immediately to succeed; when the firmament of the Christian world was to be shaken, the luminaries of its ancient sovereignties to be obscured or extinguished, its sea of nations thrown into universal tumult, and the hearts of men moved by a general anxiety and dread of the things which are coming next upon the earth." A Christian's Survey, &c., p. 199.

of the effusion of the seven vials of wrath, which are the constituent parts of the seventh trumpet. From Rev. xvi. 15, we learn that the period of the vials immediately precedes the second advent of our Lord. In a In a similar way we have seen, in considering the celestial signs which mark the close of the times of the Gentiles, that these signs immediately precede the second advent: therefore the celestial signs predicted by our Lord must synchronize with the seven Apocalyptic vials. But since the twelve hundred and sixty years end when the celestial signs begin, they equally end when the vials (which are synchronical with the celestial signs) begin, i. e. at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, which further confirms the truth of the fifth proposition.

*That the seven vials are the constituent parts of the seventh trumpet, or third woe, was shown in chap. x. of this Work.