in the midst of wolves.' If we may trust tradition, every one of that
little company, Speaker as well as hearers, died a martyr's death,
with the exception of John himself, who was preserved from it by a
miracle. But, be that as it may, our Lord is here laying down a
universal statement of the permanent condition of things; and there
is no more reason for restricting the force of these words to the
original hearers of them than there is for restricting the force of
any of the rest of this wonderful discourse. 'The world' will be in
antagonism to the Church until the world ceases to be a world,
because it obeys the King; and then, and not till then, will it cease
to be hostile to His subjects.

I. What makes this hostility inevitable?

Our Lord here prepares His hearers for what is coming by putting it
in the gentle form of an hypothesis. The frequency with which 'If'
occurs in this section is very remarkable. He will not startle them
by the bare, naked statement which they, in that hour of depression
and agitation, were so little able to endure, but He puts it in the
shape of a 'suppose that,' not because there is any doubt, but in
order to alleviate the pain of the impression which He desires to
make. He says, 'If the world hates,' not 'if the world hate'; and the
tense of the original shows that, whilst the form of the statement is
hypothetical, the substance of it is prophetic.

Jesus points to two things, as you will observe, which make this
hostility inevitable. 'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated
Me before it hated you.' And again, 'If ye were of the world, the
world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I
have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.'