Verse 12.— These are spots in your feasts of charity. The gathering of the saints together at stated times, the duty of Christians. When wicked men meet with you, their excesses are so great they are like black spots upon a clean white surface. They regard not the holy character of the feast, and the love for the Master in obedience to whose commandment it is observed, but as gluttons feed without reverence. They make pretensions to a holy life, yet by their acts and speech they demonstrate the contrary; in this respect they are like a cloud containing no water, and easily dispelled and driven away. They are like trees exhibiting an apparent prospect of much fruit, yet a fruit that never comes to maturity, but always withers and drops from the boughs; withered autumnal fruit; they are twice dead; once they died in the Jewish faith, now they have died since the faith of the gospel has been proclaimed, and there is nothing left to them but to be plucked up by the roots. What a climax! How striking in its description of false teachers. The final end of all such is to be rooted up as trees utterly barren, utterly worthless.