Luke 9:55

55. What manner of spirit We do not understand by these words, that these apostles knew not the nature of their own temper or spirit; but that they knew not the spirit of the dispensation to which they belonged. When the fifties of the wicked king came to Elijah he said, “If I be a man of God, let fire come down;” thus demonstrating his prophetic character by a miracle of destruction. But the Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. Miracles of wrath belong not to his and their mission. They forget the spirit of their dispensation. This was assigning a reason why they knew not the spirit to which they belonged; and not, as many interpret it, the spirit which belonged to them. At the same time it points to a fact too wonderful and too glorious for these apostles or the evangelists to invent, that the miracles of Jesus are throughout miracles of love and mercy. None but the great divine Original himself could have conceived such a character and thus have demonstrated its divinity forever.