Matthew says, xvi. 21, “From that time forth,” (viz. soon after Herod sought to apprehend Jesus,) “began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” And again, xx. 17, “And Jesus going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.” Similar predictions occur, Matt. xvi. 24, xvii. 22, xxvi. 2, xxvi. 32. “But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.” Mark viii. 31, ix. 9, 31, x. 32, xiv. 28. Luke ix. 22,44, xiii. 33, xviii. 31. John vii. 8, viii. 28, &c.

This was speaking so plainly that we cannot imagine how the disciples could have misunderstood him. However firm might have been their first expectation of a temporal messiah, they must have been strangely inattentive not to be prepared for things of which they had been warned so often and so clearly. As the history stands, they seem to have treated the admonitions of Jesus on such interesting points with a carelessness almost irreverent.