They thought that good and perfect
gifts might some of them very well come from below, from the father
of darkness and cruelty. They saw the Lord Jesus Christ doing good
things; driving out evil, and delivering men from the power of it;
healing the sick, cleansing the leper, curing the mad, preaching the
gospel to the poor: and yet they saw in that no proof that God's
Spirit was working in Him. Of course, if He had been one of their
own party, and had held the same doctrines as they held, they would
have praised Him loudly enough, and held Him up as a great saint of
their school, and boasted of all His good deeds as proofs of how good
their party was, and how its doctrines came from God. But as long as
He was not one of them, His good works went for nothing. They could
not see God's likeness in that loving and merciful character. All
His charity and benevolence made them only hate Him the more, because
it made them the more afraid that He would draw the people away from
them. "And of course," they said to themselves, "whosoever draws
people away from us, must be on the devil's side. We know all God's
law and will. No one on earth has anything to teach us. And
therefore, as for any one who differs from us, if he cast out devils,
it must be because the devil is helping him, for his own purposes, to
do it.
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