Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/401

 "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, (whoso, let him understand,) then let them that are in Judea flee to the mountains." This parenthetical expression is evidently thrown in by Matthew, as a warning to his readers, of an event which it behoved them to notice, as the token of a danger which they must escape. The expression was entirely local and occasional, in its character, and could never have been made a part of the discourse by Jesus; but the writer himself, directing his thoughts at that moment to the circumstances of the time, called the attention of his Christian countrymen to the warning of Jesus, as something which they must understand and act upon immediately. The inquiry then arises as to the meaning of the expression used by Jesus in his prophecy. "The abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, as standing in the holy place," unquestionably refers to the horrible violation of the sanctity of the holy places of the temple, by the banditti, styling themselves "Zealots for their country," who, taking possession of the sanctuary, called in the savage Idumeans, a heathen people, who not only profaned the temple, by their unholy presence, but defiled it with various excesses, committing there a horrible massacre, and flooding its pavements with blood. This was the abomination to which both Daniel and Matthew referred, and which the latter had in mind when he mentioned it to his brethren to whom he wrote, as the sign which they in reading should understand, and upon the warning, flee to the mountains. These horrible polluting excesses are the only events recorded in the history of the times, which can with such certainty and justice be pronounced the sad omens, to which Jesus and his evangelist referred. They are known to have occurred just before the death of Zachariah; and therefore also show this gospel to have been written after the date above fixed for that event. That it must have been written before the last siege of Jerusalem, is furthermore manifest from the fact, that, in order to have the effect of a warning, it must have been sent to those in danger before the avenues of escape from danger were closed up, as they certainly were after Titus had fully encompassed Jerusalem with his armies, and after the ferocious Jewish tyrants had made it certain death for any one to attempt to pass from Jerusalem to the Roman camp. To have answered the purpose for which it was intended, then, it must have been written at some period between the murder of Zachariah,