John 7:7

The world cannot hate you.

In that case it would hate those who had its spirit and were of it. It will not hate itself. It only hates those who rebuke its sins and oppose its ways.

Me it hateth because. testify... the works thereof are evil.

It always hates those who expose and denounce its sins. Socrates had to drink hemlock because he rebuked the folly of the Athenians; Savonarola and Huss had to be burned because they exposed the corruptions of Rome; Isaiah, Jeremiah and John the Baptist all suffered because they denounced sin in high places; and when Jesus came exposing the corruptions of the priests, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, the worldliness and debauchery of the Sadducees and Herodians, it was inevitable that he should be hated, persecuted and hunted to death. Still the world hates him. The hate of such men as Voltaire, Tom Paine and Ingersoll, and of their disciples, is due to the fact that Christ and his kingdom are. rebuke to, and condemnation of their lives.