the history of Christian churches ! There was a time when Asia Minor, and Greece, and Northern Africa, were full of professing Christians, while England and America were heathen lands. Sixteen hundred years have made a mighty change. The churches of Africa and Asia have fallen into complete decay. The English and American churches are laboring to spread the Gos- pel over the world. Well might our Lord say, "the first shall be last, and the last first/'
How true these words appear to believers, when they look back over their own lives, and remember all they have seen from the time of their own conversion ! How many began to serve Christ at the same time with them- selves and seemed to run well for a season. But where are they now ? The world has got hold of one. False doctrine has beguiled another. A mistake in marriage has spoiled a third. Few indeed are the believers who cannot call to mind many such cases. Few have failed to discover, by sorrowful experience, that " the last are often first, and the first last."
Let us learn to pray for humility, when we read texts like this. It is not enough to begin well. We must persevere, and go on, and continue in well-doing. We must not be content with the fair blossoms of a few religious convictions, and joys, and sorrows, and hopes, and fears. We must bear the good fruit of settled habits of repentance, faith, and holiness. Happy is he who counts the cost, and resolves, having once begun to walk in the narrow way, by God's grace never to turn aside.
The last thing that demands our attention in this pas- sage, is our Lord's clear foreknowledge of His own sufferings