1.  The world’s recompense to the peace-bringers.

It may be thought that this clause, at all events, has reference to special epochs only, and especially to the first founding of Christianity.  Such a reference, of course, there is.  And very remarkable is it how clearly and honestly Christ always warned would-be disciples of what they would earn in this world by following Him.

But He seems to take especial pains to show that He here proclaims a principle of equal generality with the others, by separating the application of it to His immediate hearers which follows in the next verse, from the universal statement in the text.  Their individual experience was but to illustrate the general rule, not to exhaust it.  And you remember how frequently the same thought is set forth in Scripture in the most perfectly general terms.

1.  Notice that antagonism is inevitable between a true Christian and the world.

Take the character as it is sketched in verses preceding.  Point by point it is alien from the sympathies and habits of irreligious men.  The principles are different, the practices are different.

A true Christian ought to be a standing rebuke to the world, an incarnate conscience.

There are but two ways of ending that antagonism:  either by bringing the world up to Christian character, or letting Christian character down to the world.

2.  The certain and uniform result is opposition and dislike—­persecution in its reality.

Darkness hateth light.

Some will, no doubt, be touched; there is that in all men which acknowledges how awful goodness is.  But the loftier character is not loved by the lower which if loves.

Aristides ‘the Just.’  Christ Himself.

As to practice—­a righteous life will not make a man ‘popular.’  And as for ’opinions’—­earnest religious opinions of any sort are distasteful.  Not the profession of them, but the reality of them—­especially those which seem in any way new or strange—­make the average man angrily intolerant of an earnest Christianity which takes its creed seriously and insists on testing conventional life by it.  Indolence, self-complacency, and inborn conservatism join forces in resenting the presence of such inconvenient enthusiasts, who upset everything and want to ‘turn the world upside down.’

    ’The moping owl doth to the moon complain
     Of such as, wandering near her ivy tower. 
     Molest her ancient, solitary reign.’

The seeds of the persecuting temper are in human nature, and they germinate in the storms which Christianity brings with it.

3.  The phases vary according to circumstances.

We have not to look for the more severe and gross kinds of persecution.

The tendency of the age is to visit no man with penalties for his belief, but to allow the utmost freedom of thought.

The effect of Christianity upon popular morality has been to bring men up towards the standard of Christ’s righteousness.