John 16:2

They shall put you out of the synagogues.

The first persecutions shall come from the Jews, and hence the Lord speaks of these. The first punishment shall be excommunication.. have pointed out (chapter 9:22, note) the nature of this punishment. It was more than spiritual. It made its subject outcasts. Hence Paul, in speaking of the sufferings of the saints, declares they are made outcasts. But this is not all,

for the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think he doeth God service.

No language could describe more forcibly the most intense fanaticism. Yet "the hour" was coming and close at hand when murder would be sanctified in the eyes of the murderer. Even Saul of Tarsus, as he afterwards confessed, thought he was doing God's service when he sought to kill the saints. In the Rabbinical books is found. proverb: "Whoever sheds the blood of the impious does the same as if he offered. sacrifice," and the Jews held that those who accepted Christianity were traitors to God. The same spirit has been often manifested in religious persecutions. The cruel crusades of the French kings against the Albigenses were conducted in the name of religion; the Pope of Rome celebrated. Te Deum when the news of the barbarous massacre of St. Bartholomew reached him, the "Holy Inquisition" tortured men, broke them upon the rack or wheel in the name of religion, or burned them in Auto de Fes, as "Acts of Faith." Madame Roland, about to die on the scaffold, exclaimed, "Oh, Liberty, what crimes are perpetrated in thy name!" So many. martyr might have exclaimed of Religion.