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LECTURE IX.

THE CERTAINTY OF THE RESTORATION OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL AT THE END OF THE "TIMES OF THE GENTILES."-THE SCRIPTURE SIGNS OF THOSE TIMES DRAWING TO A CLOSE, COMPARED WITH PRESENT EVENTS.

BY THE REV. ALEXANDER R. C. DALLAS, M.A.

RECTOR OF WONSTON, HANTS.

LUKE XXI. 23, 24.

There shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

It is by no trifling effort that the mind can grasp the range of thought suggested by the subject at present under our consideration; nor is it a light matter to consider the grouping of all the beings interested in our present assembling. I do not mean to allude only to the millions of the

family of Abraham, whose prospects we are endeavouring to trace out; nor to that still more multitudinous crowd of our fellow creatures, the consummation of whose hopes or fears is linked with the crisis of Israel's fate; but I would solemnly pause to realize the spiritual beings who, at this moment, are dwelling with a lively interest upon the progress of that general opening of Divine truth to the Church in the latter days, by which our thoughts are to be familiarized with the anticipations concerning God's ancient people, as part of the process by which those anticipations are to be fulfilled; and I would call upon you all, my brethren, to remember, that while we are met to search the Scriptures, in order to discover the mind of God relative to his people Israel, we are surrounded by many a gazing group of those angels who have often been the messengers of Jehovah in his open intercourse with that people, and who are now the guard of honour, as it were, of the King of the Jews, of whose presence even here to day, by His Spirit, we have the assured promise. May we each of us have the assured conviction of that divine presence; that in the fulness of faith we may to Him in the midst of us, to direct the instruction of his minister, so that it may be applied to

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each of the hearers in the demonstration of the

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