2. How willingly, if occasion require, we should suffer to any extent for him !
[We, his followers, must expect to be conformed to him11; " drinking of the cup which he drank of, and being baptized with the baptism that he was baptized with*." But shall we account this a hard matter ? Has he endured so much for us, and shall we be averse to suffer for him ? Shall we not rather "rejoice that we are counted worthy" of such an honour *, and bless our God for conferring it upon usz ? Be prepared then, every one of you, for that "fire" and that "sword" which he has taught you to expect3: and, to whatever extre- mities ye may be reduced, be ever ready to " follow him with- out the camp, bearing his reproach V]
» Matt. x. 24, 25. x Mark x. 38, 39. y Acts v. 41.
z 1 Pet. iv. 12—14. a Matt. x. 34—39. b Heb. xiii. 12, 13.
Luke xii. 57. Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ?
IT appears truly wonderful, that any who beheld the miracles of our blessed Lord should be able to resist the evidence which they afforded of his being the true Messiah. Our Lord appealed to them, that they could judge with some degree of certainty about the weather : if they saw a cloud coming from the west (the Mediterranean Sea), they judged it a prog- nostic of rain : and if the wind blew from the south (the Arabian Desert), they expected that heat would ensue: and in these things their expectations were, for the most part, realized. Yet, though "they could thus discern, with some degree of precision, the face of the sky and of the earth, they could not discern the signs of that timea;" which were so clear, that it was scarcely possible to mistake them. Hence he reproved them, in the expostulation before us, " Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ?"
Let me, from these words,.
a ver. 54 — 56.