If the Gospel of Matthew was not extant A.D. 107, it is fatal to all the prophecy in the New Testament as to the fall of Jerusalem. In the year A.D. 70, Jerusalem fell. The Roman standards waved over its ruins. The daughters of Israel wept over the ashes of their homes. The holy city was no more, and he who wrote the Gospel of Matthew as it now stands wrote history. How much is the Christianity of the Gospels indebted to the prophecies which foretold the fall of the Jewish capital? In every age and in every country where Christianity found a foothold, they were the corner-stone of the Christian faith. In the hour of doubt and despair, when the heavens looked black and the earth seemed to be a house of mourning, the Christian could draw consolation from the tears shed by Christ as he wept over the fall of the holy city. But Truth is inexorable. Her triumphant car moves on, though she leaves in her wake the wreck of the brightest hopes, the most cherished creeds, and the most ambitious schemes. So she has done for ages. And her pathway is marked by the overthrow of dogmas by which man vainly undertook to enslave the mind. To-day she is as mighty and powerful as ever. APPENDIX. (A.) Few passages from history have given rise to more discussion than the following from Suetonius: "He," meaning the Emperor Claudius, "banished all the Jews, who were continually making disturbance, at the instigation of one Crestus." (_Life of Claudius_, sec. 25.) The original is as follows: "_Judæos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes, Roma expulit_." Does this order of banishment refer to the Christians? Dr. Lardner and others think not. All difficulties vanish when we bear in mind, that the Christians then at Rome were Jewish converts from Judea. The writer knew little about Christians, and knowing them to be Jews, he says all Jews were banished, which included the Jewish converts as well as those who opposed Christianity. All engaged in the riot were included, and none but Jews were. These Jews were constantly making disturbance at the instigation of one Crestus: that is, they were quarrelling about Crestus, which was a continual subject of quarrel among the converted and unconverted Jews everywhere. The writer knew so little about Christ that he failed to get the name correct, or there may have been a mistake on the part of the transcribers. (B.)