432
The Desire of Ages
their understanding. The Light of this dark world had been shining
amid its gloom, and they had failed to comprehend whence were its
beams. They asked themselves why they had pursued a course that
made it necessary for Christ to reprove them. They often repeated His
conversations, and said, Why did we allow earthly considerations and
the opposition of priests and rabbis to confuse our senses, so that we
did not comprehend that a greater than Moses was among us, that One
wiser than Solomon was instructing us? How dull were our ears! how
feeble was our understanding!
Thomas would not believe until he had thrust his finger into the
wound made by the Roman soldiers. Peter had denied Him in His
humiliation and rejection. These painful remembrances came before
them in distinct lines. They had been with Him, but they had not
known or appreciated Him. But how these things now stirred their
hearts as they recognized their unbelief!
As priests and rulers combined against them, and they were brought
before councils and thrust into prison, the followers of Christ rejoiced
“that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.”
Acts
5:41
. They rejoiced to prove, before men and angels, that they recog-
nized the glory of Christ, and chose to follow Him at the loss of all
things.
It is as true now as in apostolic days, that without the illumination
of the divine Spirit, humanity cannot discern the glory of Christ. The
truth and the work of God are unappreciated by a world-loving and
compromising Christianity. Not in the ways of ease, of earthly honor
or worldly conformity, are the followers of the Master found. They are
far in advance, in the paths of toil, and humiliation, and reproach, in
the front of the battle “against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts
of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Ephesians 6:12
, R. V. And
now, as in Christ’s day, they are misunderstood and reproached and
[509]
oppressed by the priests and Pharisees of their time.
The kingdom of God comes not with outward show. The gospel
of the grace of God, with its spirit of self-abnegation, can never be in
harmony with the spirit of the world. The two principles are antago-
nistic. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:
for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned.”
1 Corinthians 2:14
.