that stage of the gospel message, simply would 'not receive you nor
hear your words,' in this stage has worsened into one where 'they
persecute you,' and the persecutors are now 'kings' and 'Gentiles,'
as well as Jewish councils and synagogue-frequenters. The period
covered in these verses, too, reaches to the 'end,' the final
revelation of all hidden things.

Obviously, then, our Lord is looking down a far future, and giving a
charge to the dim crowd of His later disciples, whom His prescient
eye saw pressing behind the twelve in days to come. He had no dreams
of swift success, but realised the long, hard fight to which He was
summoning His disciples. And His frankness in telling them the worst
that they had to expect was as suggestive as was His freedom from
the rosy, groundless visions of at once capturing a world which
enthusiasts are apt to cherish, till hard experience shatters the
illusions. He knew the future in store for Himself, for His Gospel,
for His disciples. And He knew that dangers and death itself will
not appal a soul that is touched into heroic self-forgetfulness by
His love. 'Set down my name,' says the man in _Pilgrim's Progress_,
though he knew--may we not say, because he knew?--that the enemies
were outside waiting to fall on him.

A further difference between this and the preceding section is, that
there the stress was laid on the contents of the disciples' message,
but that here it is laid on their sufferings. Not so much by what
they say, as by how they endure, are they to testify. 'The noble
army of martyrs praise Thee,' and the primitive Church preached
Jesus most effectually by dying for Him.

The keynote is struck in verse 16, in which are to be noted the