This is given in a double form. 'These things have I spoken unto you,
that ye should not be offended.' And, again, 'These things have I
told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told
you of them.' These two statements substantially coalesce and point
to the same idea.

They are separated, as I have said, by a reiteration, in more
emphatic form, of the dark prospect which He has been holding out to
His disciples. He tells them that the world which hates them is to be
fully identified with the apostate Jewish Church. 'The synagogue' is
for them 'the world.' There is a solemn lesson in that. The organised
body that calls itself God's Church and House may become the most
rampant enemy of Christ's people, and be the truest embodiment on the
face of the earth of all that He means by 'the world.' A formal
church is the true world always; and to-day as then. And such a body
will do the cruellest things and believe that it is offering up
Christ's witnesses as sacrifices to God. That is partly an
aggravation and partly an alleviation of the sin. It is possible that
the inquisitor and the man in the _San Benito_, whom he ties to the
stake, may shake hands yet at His side up yonder. But a church which
has become, the world will do its persecution and think that it is
worship, and call the burning of God's people an _auto-da-fe_ (act of
faith); and the bottom of it all is that, in the blaze of light, and
calling themselves God's, 'they do not know' either God or Christ.
They do not know the one because they will not know the other.

But that is all parenthetical in the present section, and so I say
nothing more about it; and ask you, rather, just to look at the
loving reasons which Christ here suggests for His present speech--
'that ye should not be offended,' or stumble. He warns them of the