I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

The woman's seed could not evade the common lot of mankind, which is born to trouble. They are an afflicted people, clothed in sackcloth, until the end of their appointed time, when they will be invested with white raiment. But till then, affliction is more or less the rod of their condition; and necessarily so; for "whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth;" that, by this wholesome, but unjoyours, discipline they who are exercised by it, now partaking of the divine holiness, may hereafter reap the peaceable fruit of righteousness.