The result is that, without dwelling on any minute detail, we are brought by the great, long-continued facts of European history, to the most important conclusion that, in all probability, we are approaching the time when Jerusalem shall no longer be trodden down of the Gentiles, and when therefore, the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. It is only reasonable to suppose that when the oppressors are taken out of the way the oppression will come to an end; and, therefore, as one of those two oppressors is already fallen, and the other falling so fast that all the powers of Europe seem unable to keep him in his place, there is surely good reason to hope that before long the captive will be free, and that the time may not be far distant when we shall hear the cry, ‘Shake thyself from the dust; arise and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.’ And it certainly is a most remarkable fact that, simultaneously with the consumption of Rome and the decay of Turkey, there has been a wonderful awakening of interest in Jerusalem and the Jews. The explorations in Palestine are very like a fulfilment of the prophecy, ‘Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof’: and if they are, there is good reason to hope that ‘the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come.’ But the interest in the people is more remarkable than that in the country. Before the great Evangelical revival at the commencement of this century no one seemed to have any idea that the Jews had any part in their own Messiah. They were treated as an outcast people, and as for their conversion, no one seems to have thought of attempting it until the formation of the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, in the year 1808. But now there are Christian missionaries labouring amongst them in most of the principal towns of Europe, and, indeed, in almost all the leading centres of their scattered population. The New Testament has been translated into Hebrew, and very nearly twenty-five thousand copies are being annually circulated amongst the Jews. The state of feeling towards them has passed through a complete revolution, so that of England it was said not long since by a learned and influential Italian Jew, ‘God has blessed, and will bless, England; because her great men, both in Church and State, take an interest in the children of Jacob.’ Such facts are most important in themselves; but when it is borne in mind that this interest in Jerusalem has been awakened just at the time of the consumption of the political power of Rome, and has been going on side by side with the decay of Turkey, it certainly ought to lead all students of the Word of God to consider carefully whether the times of the Gentiles may not be drawing to a close, and the day of redemption may not be beginning to dawn on Jerusalem.