The Apostles are “astonished exceedingly”(292) at our Lord’s severity, they had perhaps been pleased at the prospect of the accession to their community of a man who was rich and high in station and well spoken of on all sides. As soon as they had heard him told to give up all and follow, Peter, with a touch of almost infantine nature which stamps the narrative as authentic, looking to his own case says, “Lo we have left all and have followed thee.” This was no boast or our Lord would not have answered as he does; it was rather an expression of relief at finding that this special difficulty which beset the young ruler no longer stood in their way. They had been called to leave settled homes and they had done so. Peter, we know, had a wife, and James and John had a father and mother alive. Our Lord seems to give them very positive comfort. Those who had left home or family or lands for His sake and the Gospel’s should now, in this time, receive the same a hundred fold(293) as well as life hereafter. We seem to find here a direct promise of worldly benefit, which would be strangely out of accord with the general tenour of Christ’s words; but then comes a clause, preserved only by St Mark, which alters all the meaning. It contains but two words “with persecutions.” This appears to unsay all that was said before; for of what good, in the way of enjoyment, are family and possessions “in the midst of persecution”? Our Lord, to my thinking, in this passage has His eye on a certain time to come; the “brethren and sisters and mothers and children” must mean the great Christian family, and the “lands” are the possessions of that community which, while the Church was confined to Jerusalem, had all things common, “When the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own.”(294) In the exaltation of spirit in which that community lived, persecution would seem only a superficial ill, without which their happiness would have been too ecstatic for permanent spiritual health. Their condition as we know from the Acts was replete with joy; over and over again we are reminded of the gladness which filled the souls of the early converts. The reward promised, when qualified by this phrase, might rightly be set before the Apostles, for it was no reward at all except to spiritually minded men. These two words, which are omitted by St Luke, enable us to understand—what seems a little strange—why this promise is not accepted with joy and with eager questions as to when this happy time should come; it puzzled the hearers. Any rising exultation is checked by the words, “with persecutions,” and the hearers are perhaps set wondering why Christ often drops difficulties into His speech, just when He seems to be going to reveal what men particularly want to know, and why, when holding out a promise, He should dash the cup from their lips.