exposed the blindness of those teachers who disallowed the obligation of oaths sworn by the temple itself or the altar, while they strictly enforced the binding nature of engagements made by the gold of the temple or the offerings. But Christ was not to be diverted from his spiritual views by prospects of earthly splendour, and he takes occasion to deliver a prophecy which the sight around them, though it would be little calculated to make them expect its completion, would render an impressive lesson of the instability of human grandeur. See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.

After retiring from the city he sat with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, which St. Mark mentions was over against the temple"," and there, with a full view before him of the whole of that costly edifice which was the wonder of all mankind, our Lord proceeded

2 Mark, xiii. 3.

to detail more circumstantially the events of its approaching destruction, and the signs which should be a token to believers that the predicted dispensation was near at hand. Now the point on which I would dwell here, is the vicinity of the objects themselves respecting which these disclosures were made.

Never could his hearers have revisited the place where these things were uttered, or have turned their eyes towards the structure over which desolation was impending, without calling to mind the description of the last judgement, which was figuratively interwoven into the same discourse, or without reflecting on the sentences which would then finally be passed on all classes of people. Their master's words would be indelibly fixed upon their remembrance by a sort of local association; and the recurring view of the things they had once seen as well as heard would revive with peculiar freshness the memory of the solemn lesson to which the casual vicinity of the temple had originally given occasion.

A knowledge of Jewish rites explains the propriety of a figure used by our Lord at another time, in which the same readiness of allusion to passing events is beautifully marked.

On the last day of the feast of tabernacles it was customary to offer up water drawn from the fountain of Siloam as a special invocation of the blessing of him that giveth the former and the latter rain on the fruits of Judea. Now it was in reference to this annual ceremony that ' on the last day, that great day of the feast,' as St. Luke particularly notes the exact time when this occurrence took place, our Lord stood and invited the people to draw from him, as from a living fountain, the principle of spiritual life. If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. ... But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. And this metaphorical language would be the more intelligible to them, as the effusion of the Holy Spirit had been foretold by their own prophets under this very figure of living water. 'I will pour water upon him that is

thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour my spirit on thy seed 3.

Similar language occurs frequently throughout the Jewish Scripture, and we find it imitated by St. Paul and St. John; but it is worthy of notice, that the only other passage in which Christ employs the same figure is remarkable for a similar appropriateness of reference to the circumstances of the moment. When he met the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, in order to draw her attention to the truths concerning the influence of the Holy Spirit, which he was about to unfold under the image of living water, he introduced his discourse by saying to her, 'Give me to drink,' In the conference that followed, he enlarges under the same apposite metaphor on the satisfying and purifying nature of the fountain of grace. 'Whosoever drinketh the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of

3 Is. xliv. 3.

4 1 Cor. x. 4. Rev. vii. 17; xxi. 6, &c.

water springing up unto everlasting life.' He might have explained to the woman in other words and without a figure, that if any one would turn from the exhausted or polluted sources of worldly wisdom or earthly happiness, and become athirst for the living God, he should be refreshed with an inexhaustible supply of the Holy Spirit, springing up in heavenly affections, and purifying the soul from the vitiating properties of sin. But considering her situation, and the errand on which she came to the well, no language however plain would have been so intelligible as that which was actually used, no expedient however plausible would have impressed the doctrine of grace so indelibly upon her imagination.

On the very day after the allusion to the water which has been just noticed, Jesus was discoursing in the treasury with some Jews who believed, when he enlarged on the glorious liberty and freedom from spiritual bondage which it was the privilege of his disciples to enjoy. According to Sir Isaac Newton's calcu