However unintelligible His other words may have been to them, surely this magnificent promise will have looked most inviting to the Jews; to those, at least, of them who were not vehemently prepossessed against the speaker, who did not count Him an impostor. The next sentence seems to say that it was not so. '_They answered Him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?_' Who were they who said this? We should certainly gather from the previous passage,--'_those Jews who had believed on Him_.' At any rate, St. John takes no pains to distinguish them from the rest. If they were not the only objectors to our Lord's words, they must have joined in the objection. There is deep instruction in the thought that they did. The voice of Jesus had reached them. It had not merely floated about them, but had penetrated within them. He stood before them who did always the things that pleased His Father. The first sense of having discovered the Divine Man must have been one of delight,--the greatest, keenest delight which they had ever experienced. Then this Divine Man points upwards to a truth in which He Himself is believing and resting. He says He can make them inheritors of that. But at the same moment He looks down into them. He detects a hollowness within them,--a quailing at the thought of this truth,--a secret dislike of it--a preference for that which is hostile to it. They are conscious of a chill. The keen pleasure has been succeeded by a pain as keen. The hope which He holds out to them they cannot grasp. The evil which He has laid bare is near and present. Their pride is awakened; they think of the glory of their descent; they cannot bear to be spoken of as slaves.