clothed in darknes and receding from their view, they saw not and felt not the cold, cheerless, and gloomy night that was gathering around them, for their spiritual atmosphere was illumined by the false and delusive glare of their selfish and infernal lusts. They did not know or even suspect that heavenly wisdom had departed from them, for that self-derived intelligence, which corresponded to their own evil affections, had been mistaken for the pure light of heaven. They had chosen out such prophecies as, in their literal and apparent meaning, were best calculated to gratify their national pride and worldly ambition; and as the Son of Man did not fulfil the false expectations, which were based upon the literal interpretation of their favorite prophecies, they rejected and crucified him.
On turning to the New Testament, we find several passages very similar to those which foretold the spiritual ruin of the Jewish church. In Matthew xxiv. 29, the Lord says: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken." This prophecy is repeated in nearly the same words in Mark xiii. 24, 25, and in Luke xxi. 25. It will be remembered that these prophecies are very similar to those in Joel, which Peter declared were fulfilled when the Jewish church ended and the Christian church began. The Lord described the judgments that were about to fall upon the Jewish church, in the following words: "And all the hosts of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all their host shall fall down as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a fallen fig from the fig tree." (Is. xxxiv. 4.) Very nearly the same words occur in the New Testament, where they evidently refer to the consummation of the age, or, as it has generally been called, the "end of the world." "And I beheld, when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo! there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black
