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is here presented.

I. AS GLOWING WITH HATE.

1. It was a hatred of goodness. To hate the mean, the selfish, the false, the dishonest, and morally dishonourable would be right. But evil was not the object of their hatred.

(1) It was good as embodied in the life of Christ. "It hated Me before it hated you." How deep, burning, persistent, and cruelly operative was this enmity from Bethlehem to Calvary.

(2) It was good as reflected in His disciples. Just so far as they imbibed and reflected the Spirit of Christ were they hated. "For My name's sake."

2. It was a hatred developed in persecution. It was not a hatred that slumbered in a passion or that went off even in abusive language, it prompted the infliction of the greatest cruelties. The history of true Christians in all ages has been a history of persecution.

3. It was a hatred without a just reason. "Without a cause." Of course they had a "cause." The doctrines of goodness clashed with their deep rooted prejudices, its policy with their daily procedure, its eternal principles flashed on their consciences and exposed their wickedness. But their "cause" was the very reason why they ought to have loved Christ. Christ knew and stated the cause of the hatred (ver. 19).

4. It was a hatred forming a strong reason for brotherly love amongst the disciples. Christ begins His forewarning them of it by urging them to love one another (ver. 17). As your enemies outside of you are strong in their passionate hostility towards you, be you compactly welded together in mutual love. Unity is strength.

II. AS LOADED WITH RESPONSIBILITY (ver. 22). These words must, of course, be taken in their comparative sense. Before He came amongst them the guilt of their nation had been augmenting for centuries, and they had been, filling up the measure of their iniquities. But great as was their sin before He came it was trifling compared to it now since His advent amongst them.

1. Had He not come they would not have known the sin of hating Him. Hatred towards the best of beings, the incarnation of goodness, is sin in its most malignant form, it was the culmination of human depravity. But had they not known Him they could not have hated Him, the heart is dead to all objects outside the region of knowledge.

2. Had He not come they would not have rejected Him. "He came to His own and His own received Him not." The rejection of Him involved the most wicked folly, the most heartless ingratitude, the most daring impiety. "If they which despised Moses' law died without mercy under two witnesses," etc.

3. If He had not come they would not have crucified Him. What crime on the long black catalogue of human wickedness is to be compared to this?Conclusion:

1. Good men accept the moral hostility of the unregenerate world. Your great Master taught you to accept it. It is in truth a test of your character and an evidence of your Christliness.

2. Nominal Christians read your doom.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

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KJV: If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

WEB: If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you.