What gives this journey its great interest to me, with my particular purpose in view, is the refusal of hospitality to our Lord by the Samaritan villages, and the enquiry of James and John, whether they should not call down fire from heaven; wherein the “Sons of Thunder” justify their name. “And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he were going to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and consume them? But he turned, and rebuked them. And they went to another village.”(276) “Some ancient authorities,” as we read in the margin of our Revised Version, “add, _and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of_.” This is so exactly after our Lord’s manner, not only in the quality but in the _quantity_ of rebuke, that I have no doubt but that it is a genuine saying of Christ preserved by tradition whether it were originally in St Luke’s Gospel or not. It is like our Lord to drop a word indicating error and leave the real correction to grow up in the learner’s mind as though it was supplied by himself. He rarely dilates on what is blameworthy and never recurs to a failing that has been noticed at the time. James and John, we must recollect, had just witnessed the Transfiguration, this helps to explain their mood of mind. They dwelt upon the recollection of this all the more because it was a secret possession of the three. The contrast of their Master’s inherent greatness and the humiliation to which He was subjected moved their indignation. The Lord of heaven was refused hospitality by a village in Samaria, and this not out of niggardliness—that would have moved the Apostles less—but from an old animosity about where men should worship. They, no doubt, regarded their “jealousy for the Lord God” as something commendable, and were surprised at our Lord’s rebuking them and telling them that they knew not what Spirit they were of. The fact was, that our Lord detected in this fierce proposal a further growth of that tendency to spiritual arrogance which had been indicated by their forbidding the man who followed not with them, and this seems to cause our Lord concern. He treats it as a spiritual affection which it would require care to remove. He does not inveigh against it, but His parables and the drift of His teaching militate against the propensity to exercise “Lordship” over men.