/ I. Christ rejected and outcast to be followed by His own. HEB. xiii. 13, 14. "Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. For here have we no continuing city; but we seek one to come. 'HE Jew's attachment to the city of his forefathers THE 66 was extraordinarily strong. It comes out in a very picturesque and pathetic way in the whole history of Nehemiah. "Why is thy countenance sad" (said the king Artaxerxes to his cup-bearer, Nehemiah), seeing thou art not sick? And I said unto the king, Let the king live for ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates are consumed with fire?" And it was not the local attachment to the city alone but they had their affections very intimately bound up with the Jewish polity and priesthood, the temple services and ceremonial: day by day they went on riveting and tightening themselves, blent up with, as they were, and interpenetrating their daily life, all their habitual course of action, current of thought, topics of conversation. It was very hard to snap all Neh. ii. 2, 3. |