VI.  In our Lord’s commerce with his disciples, one very observable particular is the difficulty which they found in understanding him when he spoke to them of the future part of his history, especially of what related to his passion or resurrection.  This difficulty produced, as was natural, a wish in them to ask for further explanation:  from which, however, they appear to have been sometimes kept back by the fear of giving offence.  All these circumstances are distinctly noticed by Mark and Luke, upon the occasion of his informing them (probably for the first time) that the Son of man should be delivered into the hands of men.  “They understood not,” the evangelists tell us, “this saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not; and they feared to ask him of that saying.”  Luke ix. 45; Mark ix. 32.  In Saint John’s Gospel we have, on a different occasion, and in a different instance, the same difficulty of apprehension, the same curiosity, and the same restraint:—­“A little while and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.  Then said some of his disciples among themselves, What is this that he saith unto us?  A little while and ye shall not see me:  and again, a little while and ye shall see me:  and, Because I go to the Father?  They said, therefore, What is this that he saith?  A little while?  We cannot tell what he saith.  Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and said unto them,—­” &c.  John xvi. 16, et seq.

VII.  The meekness of Christ during his last sufferings, which is conspicuous in the narratives of the first three evangelists, is preserved in that of Saint John under separate examples.  The answer given by him, in Saint John, (Chap. xviii. 20, 21.) when the high priest asked him of his disciples and his doctrine; “I spake openly to the world:  I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing.  Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me what I have said unto them,” is very much of a piece with his reply to the armed party which seized him, as we read it in Saint Mark’s Gospel, and in Saint Luke’s:(Mark xiv. 48.  Luke xxii. 52.) “Are you come out as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me?  I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not.”  In both answers we discern the same tranquillity, the same reference to his public teaching.  His mild expostulation with Pilate, on two several occasions, as related by Saint John, (Chap. xviii. 34; xix. 11.) is delivered with the same unruffled temper as that which conducted him through the last scene of his life, as described by his other evangelists.  His answer, in Saint John’s Gospel, to the officer who struck him with the palm of his hand, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?” (Chap. xviii. 23.) was such an answer as might have been looked for from the person who, as he proceeded to the place