Luke 6:22-23 Blessed are you, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you… And so when bad men are not hardened in wickedness they can be won over by the good, but when they are they hate and persecute the good, whose mere silent lives rebuke them. It was thus that Sodom hated Lot; it was thus that the Ephesians expelled Hermodorus because he was virtuous; it was thus that the Athenians ostracised Aristides because he was just. "The honourable and religious gentleman," said a slave-holding member of Parliament, speaking of William Wilberforce, in the House of Commons. He was properly scathed in reply with the lightnings of the great man's eloquence, but the epithet spoke volumes with the silent, unconscious, inevitable rebuke of vice and protest for holiness by every true and righteous man. And mark, that when the bad, hating the good, sneer them out of court, repress them by violence, madden the blind multitude by lies against them, poison them as Socrates was poisoned, banish them as Epictetus was banished, burn them as Savonarola was burnt, execrate them as Whitfield was execrated, do not think that then the good have failed. Even in their ashes live their wonted fires, their voices even from the grave sound in the thunder's mouth, their dead hands pull down the stronghold of their enemies, and tyrants tremble at their ghosts. What was the nature of Jesus? Between two murderers He hung in agony upon the cross, amid the howlings alike of secular and religious hatred. Before three centuries were over that gibbet of torture and infamy sat upon the sceptres and shone upon the crowns of kings. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. |
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